Untitled

48 THE EXPLORxVTION OF THE CAUCASUS
flowers, enough to have sufficed tor thi-ee weddings, on the
ground, and remounted our horses.
'
The path became better, and we could at least botanise with
our eyes without having constantly to war with the branches.
But the flesh is weak. Before we had gone two hundred paces
we had once more jumped to the ground, magnetically attracted
by new marvels. The first was a giant campanula, as deeply blue
as a gentian, a Caucasian exaggeration of our European latlfolia ;
then a gentian with lilac petals stippled with black ;
^
next an
Inula, justly named grandijlora, recalling the elecampane, a Pyrethrum
with white umbels^ growing higher than a man ; and, lastly,
once more the beautiful yellow lily already gathered in Ajaria,
a bulb of which we took away. These bulbs, it may be remarked,
are beginning to be exported, and fetch a good price ; and we were
told that some European collectors had them pulled up by the
hundredweight and sent them to England. They will not succeed,
however, in destroying the species very soon, for it is widely dis-
tributed throughout the Caucasus, and is found up to the highest
meadows, of which it is one of the most beautiful adornments.
"
'"Foi'ward, signori !
Gosta has just shot an edible bird— a
thrush, I think—and he grows impatient. Our little band marches
on once more, those on foot in single file, the horsemen behind,
determined at last to make up for lost time and to resist the
enchantments of the macrojiora. This is the name we henceforth
which is not men-
apply to this vegetation of giant plants,
tioned in treatises on geographical botany, and of which we have
read only in certain passages in Dr. Radde's works.^ Macroflora
is a hybrid neologism, which might not be tolerated on the plains,
but under the domes of the great pines, at 6000 feet above the
sea, it may perhaps pass muster.
1 Sweertia punctata, Baumg. Pyrethrum macrophyllum, W. K.
3 Vur Vortrdrje Yiber dem Kaukasns, Petcnnana's Mitt, Erfranzungsheft 36 ; Die drei
Langenhochthdhr Imcriticns, Tiliis, 1867. E. Levier, ^'1 Travers le Caucase. Paris, Fischbacher,
18!)"). I dwelt on this cliaracteristic of tlie Caucasian flora in my Travels in the Caucasus,
pvililished in 18G9, and aj,'ain in my paper published in 1888 in the Proceedings of the Boyal
Geographical Society (November), where I first wrote the words repeated on p. 43 :
general type of the vegetation is more luxuriant than on the Alps. The species are larger
the blossoms more abundant.'
'
The