256 DR. GUSTAV RADDE ON THE VERTICAL RANGE 
Phanerogams not only live above the snow-line, but maintain 
their ground and are able to flower and mature seed. The last 
function is completed in a very short period, the above-ground 
life of the tallest is finished in five to six weeks. 
It would be of the highest value for the accurate and scientific 
solution of such questions if continuous and relative observa- 
tions of temperature were made at the altitudes under considera- 
tion. The indefatigable and adventurous Parrot (‘ Reise zum 
Ararat,’ p. 187) bas recorded that he passed two nights in the 
open air at a height of 13,036 Paris feet (13,122 English feet) on 
the 26-27th September, 1829, “on a shelf of rock, without fur, 
quite comfortably ;” and thereby confirms the fact that such 
spots, notwithstanding their great elevation, are warmer at night 
than the grassy slopes lower down. I may also remark that this 
is according to my own experience ; for instance, at one of our 
halting places, on the north side of Bingöl-dagh, on the 
5/17-6/18 August, 1874, at about 10,000 feet altitude, where 
there were still to be found patches of grass, it was colder than 
at a much higher rocky wilderness on the sides of the crater of 
the extinct voleano, where in the hollows even succulent Umbel- 
liferæ from 2 to 4 feet high were able to grow strongly. The 
fact being, that these hollows offered a purely local higher night 
temperature, by reason of the sun-heat absorbed in the daytime 
by the dark volcanic stone, than could be found anywhere 
around, except at lower elevations. Nor was it otherwise on 
8/20-9/21 August, 1871, on the northern face of the Greater 
Ararat, where, with Dr. Sievers, we passed the night by the little 
crater lake Küp-göl, at more than 11,000 feet, and on the 
9/21st ascended thence to 14,500 feet. Although snow-water 
was frozen that morning close to our camp, yet it was not till we 
had ascended to 14,300 feet that we met with the last dwarfed 
specimens of Draba araratica, Rupr., and Pedicularis araratica, 
Bunge, the latter in flower and ripe fruit. All that applies to 
the exposed organs of these plants, applies with still greater 
force to their subterranean life. It is noteworthy that a plant 
of hardly an inch in height is provided with a fibrous network of 
perennial roots, extending to more than three to five times that 
diameter and from ten to fifteen times that circumference. The 
perennial cushion-like Alsineæ and species of Draba, for instance, 
at the highest point of their vertical distribution attain scarcely 
an inch above the ground, while their main roots reach a length 
