H. Correvon, of Geneva, gives the Gardeners Chronicle the following in regard to this pretty alpine plant:

"This is one of the most graceful of the plants of the Alps. It is called ' Swiss Tea,' because the population of the alpine cantons make a drink from it which with them takes the place of tea. It occurs everywhere in the region of the Alps, but it seems to prefer more particularly calcareous soils. It is hardly to be found above 7200 feet in elevation, and its inferior limit appears to be about 4900 feet.

" Some horticultural books, on account of its generic name, say that this species grows in the woods, but this is a complete error. It is never found in the shade, but always exposed to the rays of the sun, and on a stony soil, frequently limestone. Often it is found on rocks most exposed to the sun, and where the rays penetrate into the fissures. It continues in bloom a long time in the Alps, and its clusters, which extend so as to form a carpet on which one may lie down, have flowers nearly all the summer. The shining green of its foliage, white and tomentose underneath, the graceful form of the crenate and dentate leaves, produce a pleasing impression on the traveller who visits the Alps; but when the immense tufts of dwarf procumbent verdure are covered with flowers, each like a small wild rose without its thorns, the effect is very striking. One cannot help plucking some of them, and what traveller is there who has not wished to lay himself down to rest on these inviting tufts".

[The generic name, Dryas, was given most likely from the leaves resembling an oak leaf, and not because like its namesake the Dryads, it likes to live in oak woods. Pursh found it on the White Mountains in New Hampshire, but it has not been seen since his time. It was probably left there by some receding glacier. In Alaska the Editor was examining in Glacier Bay, one of the huge glaciers of that region, and on a hugh pile of glacial drift left by a portion of the edge of the glacier that had recently melted away, the only plant for scores of acres around, was a mass of Dryas, forming a carpet, such as described here, of about three feet over. It had evidently been brought down from nobody knows how many miles in the interior, by a ride on the surface of the glacier on which a mass of earth with the plant had fallen, perhaps a hundred years ago, for a glacier moves very slowly. The incident, however, seemed to suggest that the Dryas was a thoroughly arctic plant, and its presence should imply arctic surroundings in the past. - Ed. G. M].