BOTANICAL RAMBLES. BY MARGARET PLUES, AUTHOR OF "RAMBLES IN SEARCH OF WILD FLOWERS," ETC. NO. IX. OVER THE MOUNTAINS. WE have torn ourselves away from the beautiful Lake of Como, and have bid a most reluctant adieu to lovely Italy, and its impulsive, warm-hearted people; and with saddened hearts we have crossed the boundary into Switzerland. Tired with the heat and dust, we welcome the sight of the calm lake of Lugano, and are still more glad when we find ourselves at rest in the comfortable hotel upon its banks. Here, at Lugano, it is impossible to realize that we have left Italy. The people have the same olive complexion, the same classical features, the same sweet-flowing speech. The women of Lugano are especially beautiful. We saw them in the shops, and in the churches, during our short sojourn, and were struck by the large proportion of handsome faces among them. We visited a show villa there, but it was far less worth seeing than those on the Lake of Como, only the grounds were cool and shady; nature there was unassisted by art, and the crowds of poet's narcissus and Solomon's seal that mingled among the long grasses in the woods were indigenous in the soil. Two old bachelors lived in the villa, of the respective ages of ninety and ninety-five, hale old gentlemen, who rode out daily on slow, fat horses, and took life easy. We started from Lugano with braced-up energies, for now we were fairly en route for the St. Gothard, and must travel long hours, and be ready to meet possible hardships. We were soon mounting the zigzag road up Monte Cenere, finding fresh beauties at every step. At first the meadows were all sprinkled over, as the woods of the old bachelors' villa had been, with white narcissus flowers, their crimson-edged nectaries closely resembling the eye of a pheasant. Soon the road was bordered with rocks, out of which, indeed, in many instances, it had been cut; and here a most lovely stonecrop was exhibiting its charms in profusion. The plant is not uncommon on our English rockeries, only it never flowers so luxuriantly with us as in Switzerland. The leaves are thick, oval, scalloped at the edge, and of a glaucous colour: they grow in compact rosettes, and out of the centre of the cluster shoots the flowering stem. Were it in proportion to the leafy part of the plant, we should expect it to grow about three inches high; certainly we could not raise our expectations beyond that, seeing that the root is very small, and has very little hold on the rough rock. But the stems grow three feet high in favourable situations, and the greatest number of those we saw were fully two feet long. These stems are of a pink colour, branched in every direction, and all covered with minute red hairs; each little branchlet bears a star-shaped flower of intense whiteness, with ten red anthers in a circle in its centre. Hundreds of these beauteous blossoms crowd upon each well-branched stalk, and have the effect, at a slight distance, of an ostrich plume fixed in the rock. So striking was this plant that we could see it at the opposite side of the valley, and our carriage often passed it so closely on the rocks above us that those outside might have touched it, though they could not have gained a hold upon it. But whenever the ascent was steep enough to warrant our walking, the coquettish Sedum was nowhere to be seen, and thus it constantly eluded our desire for its possession. When we reached the very high ground, we found the rocks adorned by interlacing branches of the shrubby milkwort (Polygala chamobuxus). It has all the characteristics of a true shrub, woody stem, and thick, dark evergreen leaves like those of the box tree, but it only grows from two to four inches in length, and is quite prostrate. Its blossoms are much larger than those of our familiar blue favourite, Polygala vulgaris, and are of two varieties in the one the two petal-like wings of the calyx are bright rose colour, and in the other creamy white; in both varieties the corolla is yellow, shading to deepest orange before fading. The blossoms being large and numerous, the tiny shrubs presented gay objects among the rocks. Where a little earth had made a home for roots the mountain pansies had effected thriving settlements. Both here and on the banks beyond, and in the pastures up to the very snow, our bright-eyed friends were scattered as abundantly among the grass as the buttercups in the fields at home. There was also a little globularia, that dotted its round blue heads and minute branches in and out among the yellow pansies, and produced an excellent effect (G. alypum). Where the ground was wet, a little saxifrage (S. lingulata) raised its slender branches of white flowers. It had a resemblance to the splendid stonecrops, as was becoming in plants that might be called first cousins; but its leaves did not grow in rosettes, and they were bright in colour and tender in substance. As we descended towards Bellinzona we got charming views of the head of Lago Maggiore, and of the valley of the Ticino, in which it lay; on the other side we began to see the snowy mountains, no longer as a distant object, but quite near, and threatening to chill us with their icy breath. The sight of the snow made us draw our wraps nearer, and think very seriously of the night. A halt at Bellinzona, and a good homely luncheon at the hotel. The landlady, a very English-looking widow, was most motherly, and followed us to the door with offers of apples and other eatables for our further journey. The road now became truly Alpine in character; sometimes it was hemmed in by frowning rocks of immense height, from which frequent cascades descended, reminding us of the valley of Lauterbrunnen, and at any rate assuring us that we were truly in Switzerland, that land of fountains and of streams; and wherever the rocks were the most savage and unapproachable, that feathery stonecrop hung its plumes in the most profuse abundance. The road becomes very steep, and the horses pause to rest. We seize the opportunity for a walk, hoping to gather some of the treasures which hitherto we have seen but not grasped. We press on, for the tantalizing plants are absent from every rock we approach, and now there is a broad strip of meadow between us and the rocks. In this meadow we see quantities of white cinquefoil (Potentilla alba), and of crimson mountain pink (Dianthus prolifer). We paused to gather these, then hurried on, lest we should be called upon to re-enter the carriage. Courage! there are high rocks before us, and only brushwood and briars beneath; there is the stonecrop,-not out of reach surely-and something beside it of glowing red, but too large for a flower. On-on! but the bells of the horses sound nearer and nearer, and we must not delay the expedition. We have reached the brushwood, a dozen steps will bring us to the rocks, but these steps are over broken rocks, with deep holes between them, and briars winding in and out. The bells come nearer, but our prize is in sight. Cautiously we clamber across the treacherous ground, holding our dress firmly, to be ready to wrench it from the briars; we gain the foot of the rock; there is the stonecrop, beautiful beyond measure, more beautiful there than elsewhere, because beside it grows a great, stately, glaring red tiger-lily! But it is some inches beyond our reach. A viburnum shrub is near; we select a long branch wherewith to coax down the pair of coveted plants. It is the work of a minute, or else we must have given up the pursuit, for the bells have stopped-they are waiting for us. And now the road lies almost level, for a time bordered with sloping pastures and verdant meadows all studded over with plum and cherry trees, white with abundant blossoms. Familiar wild flowers grow under these orchard trees,-primroses and cowslips and wood-anemones, so that we could imagine ourselves in England again. Then the quiet landscape yields to wilder scenery, the rocks tower to the sky, white cascades hang like pennons on the mountain sides, or fall noisily within hearing of the road travellers; the valley becomes very narrow, and but scant verdure is to be seen, firs prevailing instead of the cherry and birch and mulberry trees, and the snowy mountains hem in the close valley. We stop at Faida for refreshment; a grand cascade is falling opposite the hotel, and, though on the other side of the valley, we hear its roar as if close to us. They bring us beautiful pink trout, and fresh eggs, and new bread and butter, and we feel the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places. The light is failing when we continue our journey. We can just distinguish the bird's-eye primula dotting over the swampy pasture, or making a natural ribbon border by the streamlet's side, and we journey on for two hours in darkness, blind to lesser beauties, though still alive to the gushing waterfall with its sheet of foam, and the ever-approaching snow. The last thing that we saw by the fast fading light was a shepherd boy kneeling before a little roughly hewn image of the Blessed Virgin, with clasped hands and head uncovered, in the rain, saying his evening prayer at the sound of the angelus bell. We slept that night in an inn on the mountain side,—or rather, we had beds there; sleep was another thing altogether. We were necessarily late in seeking rest, and ere the coveted sleep came the night diligence arrived. Then there was such a running up and down stairs, and shouting, and bumping of packages, that it was impossible even to think of sleep. Bells were unknown in that remote region, and those who wanted anything "hollared out." They had powerful voices, those night visitors, and their calls were not like angels' whispers; but at last they got their suppers and were at peace. Then a calm stole over us, and surrounding objects became indistinct, and the pattering of the rain began to blend with the distant cataract's roar; in fact, we were just what old nurses call "dropping off," when the sound of horses' feet was heard mingling with the shouts of stableThe morning diligence was about to begin its journey3 a.m. Our journey was to commence soon after dawn, so it was not worth while trying to sleep now. The rain had ceased, so we felt in good courage, and made our preparations accordingly, dressing ourselves in duplicate garments for our excursion amid the snow. men. Thanks to the unrestful night, we were ready before the vetturino, so we began our journey on foot. We passed mountain pastures covered with yellow pansies, and the pretty, bell-shaped lilac soldanella; the numerous streamlets traversing these lands were often edged with primula, both our own bird's-eye species and a crimson one, resembling our P. Scotica. Still gayer were the blossoms of a rich crimson-tinted variety of the Primula auricula, which first began to appear soon after the carriage overtook us, and showed itself from time to time, shyly nestling under rocks surrounded by white crocuses, which grew as abundantly on the mountain side as daisies on our lawns, the last 300 feet from the snow; in fact, so plentifully were they scattered within that circuit, that it required but little stretch of imagination to fancy them fragments of snow blown off the snow fields by the wind. We travelled in the carriage for an hour and a half from Aerola, where we had spent the night, the road a zigzag line up the mountain, and then we came to the veritable snow country, and carriage travelling was no longer safe. As previously arranged, a number of rough sledges were awaiting us-like double perambulators on runners instead of wheels, and with a horse to pull instead of a nursery maid to push. The rain had come on again, and the snow was very thick and at the same time very wet, so we had need of all our wraps. We were packed two and two in the sledges, one sledge being devoted to |