AN APPRECIATION AND A PLEA PAINTED AND WRITTEN BY G. FLEMWELL AUTHOR OF “ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS” WITH TWENTY-SIX REPRODUCTIONS OF WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS London    ::     ::     HUTCHINSON & CO. Paternoster Row       ::       ::       ::       1911 TO MADEMOISELLE MARTHE DEDIE AND ALL AT “LA COMBE,” ROLLE (VAUD)...

Last year Mr. G. Flemwell gave us a very beautiful volume upon the Alpine Flora, and it has met with well-deserved success. But the author is not yet satisfied. He thinks to do better, and would now make known other pictures—those of Alpine fields, especially during the spring months. Springtime in our Alps is certainly the most beautiful moment of the year, and the months of May and June, even to the middle of July, are the most brilliant of all. It is a season which, up to the present, we have

OF OUR ENTHUSIASM FOR “ALPINES” “We are here dealing with one of the strongest intellectual impulses of rational beings. Animals, as a rule, trouble themselves but little about anything unless they want either to eat it or to run away from it. Interest in, and wonder at, the works of nature and of the doings of man are products of civilisation, and excite emotions which do not diminish, but increase with increasing knowledge and cultivation. Feed them and they grow; minister to them and they wil

ALPINE FLOWER-FIELDS “If you go to the open field, you shall always be in contact directly with the Nature. You hear how sweetly those innocent birds are singing. You see how beautifully those meadow-flowers are blossoming.... Everything you are observing there is pure and sacred. And you yourselves are unconsciously converted into purity by the Nature.”—YOSHIO MARKINO, My Idealed John Bulless . Alpine Flower-fields ; it is well that we should at once come to some understanding as to the term “A

THE MAY FIELDS It is essential that we arrive amid the Alpine fields in May; for we must watch them from the very beginning. To postpone our coming until June would be to miss what is amongst the primest of Alpine experiences: the awakening of the earlier gems in their shy yet trustful legions. Indeed, in June in any ordinary year, we should risk finding several lovely plants gone entirely out of bloom, except perhaps quite sparsely in some belated snow-clogged corner; for, be it remembered, we

THE VERNAL GENTIAN Do you ask what the Alps would be without the Edelweiss? Ask, rather, what they would be without the little Vernal Gentian! Ask what would be the slopes and fields of Alpine Switzerland without this flower of heaven-reflected blue, rather than what the rocks and screes and uncouth places would be without Leontopodium alpinum of bloated and untruthful reputation. Ask what Alpland’s springtide welcome and autumnal salutation would be if shorn of this little plant’s bright azure

IN STORM AND SHINE Although Nature is moving apace, and the poet declares he has even “heard the grasses springing underneath the snow”; although one set of flowers is surplanting another in startlingly swift succession, and the first-fruits of the Alpine year are already on the wane, we will take our own time and study this progress with deliberate care and attention. We have seen May smiling; we ought—nay, we are in duty bound—to see her frowning. Like the récluse of Walden, we ought each of u

THE JUNE MEADOWS “On prête aux riches,” and here is Nature lending yet more wealth to fields that were already so wealthy! It is simply amazing with what doting enthusiasm she pours her floral riches upon the Alps! Many who know only the June fields in England think that we who write of the Swiss fields at this season are either in a chronic state of hysteria, or else do wilfully point our story as if it were a snake story or the story of a tiger-hunt. But, let the fact be known, in writing or s

ON FLORAL ATTRACTIVENESS AND COLOUR Our knowledge of life behind the balder manifestations of life is as yet so deficient that it would be pure conceit to pretend more than lightly to suggest certain thoughts that may possibly commence to explain something of the affinity existing between ourselves and the flowers. That such an affinity does actually exist there appears sufficient evidence to warrant our believing, and no one, I imagine, with an interested eye for these matters, would care to pr

THE RHODODENDRON According to authority, there are about 186 species of Rhododendron in the world. The greatest number of varieties inhabit India and China, and they are important plants in the Caucasus, where often—as with Rhododendron ponticum —they cover the entire side of a mountain. In Switzerland there are but two varieties, R. ferrugineum and R. hirsutum , and they are to the Swiss Alps what the Heather is to the Scottish mountains (with, however, this difference—the Alps have also the He

THE JULY FIELDS Amid the brilliant floral gathering which crowds into the arena of the Alps upon the blazoned entry of July, one marks no sign of the fair and frail St. Bruno’s Lily. Nor is this as it should not be. Dainty to the point of extreme delicacy, this flower of Paradise is justly of a season more restrained, and one should not heap regrets upon its absence from so flamboyant a concourse as this present. The rich-blue Bell Gentian is likewise absent from the gay and jostling crowd, havi

THE AUTUMN CROCUS Perhaps the only flower to bless, and bless again, the passage of the scythe over the damp slopes and fields of Alpine Switzerland is Colchicum autumnale , the so-called Autumn Crocus; for, from the close-cropped grass it pushes up its blossoms when all other field-growth has done its utmost. What sorry plight it would be in if the tall yellowing plants and grasses were still left standing, cumbering the ground with a dense and matted vegetation! It would be smothered; or, at b

ALPINE FIELDS FOR ENGLAND “En multipliant la beauté, en donnant au monde des humbles le sens de la sincère beauté, vous lui aurez fait la plus exquise et peut-être la plus utile des charités.”— Pierre Vignot. The title of this chapter will come as a shock to some, and they will think it an insult to, and an outrage upon, Nature’s existing efforts for English meadows. In my previous volume, “Alpine Flowers and Gardens,” I ventured some mild wonder “that more attempts are not made in England to cr

SOME WAYS AND MEANS “No gardener has made experiments, however small, in the formation of a rock garden and the culture of Alpine plants without bringing a new gladness to himself and others.”—S. REYNOLDS HOLE, A Book About the Garden . For such as wish to set about creating an Alpine meadow, either as an attractive feature of their pleasure-grounds or—which is more to the point—as a completing part of their rock-garden, let me at once say that this volume is no detailed vade mecum , and that, f

Pen- and brush-craft pale their ineffectual fires before the beauty of Alpine grass-lands, and flawful and halting has been the manner of presenting my subject; but I hope a sufficient glimpse of its fascination and importance will have been caught to raise enthusiasm to the point of making amends for a neglectful past. Whatever may be the verdict upon the question of introducing Swiss floral wealth to our meadows generally, perhaps enough has been said to make it plain that very many of the mou