270 On the State of Vegetation on high Mountains. 



sometimes refusing this conformity of productions to re- 

 gions which unite all the conformities of soil and of cli- 

 mate. 



In the zone of trees is seen a shrub common to all the 

 mountains of Europe, and which is at the same time pecu- 

 liar to them : it is never found any where else. Intractable 

 to cultivation, it languishes in our gardens : it requires the 

 soil, air, water, and snow of its native place ; it requires 

 mountains, and it must even-have a particular determinate 

 situation. The plant here alluded to is the Rhododendron : 

 nothing can be more brilliant than this shrub when in 

 flower," but nothing is more delicate or intractable. It ap- 

 pears in the Pyrenees exactly at the absolute height of 160O 

 metres, and stops exactly at 2600 ; but between the limits 

 within which it is confined it is so abundant and so vigo- 

 rous, that it would almost be as difficult to extirpate as it is 

 to transplant it. 



The juniper traverses this band, and ascends much higher. 

 I have found it at the altitude of 2900 metres above the 

 level of the sea; but at each stage to which it rises it loses 

 some part of those characters by which it is distinguished 

 in our plains*. In the high region it is the juniper of Swe- 

 den and Lapland, low and stuntod, with its tiunk creeping 

 over the ground to seek for shelter between the quarters 

 of the rock which are within its reach. There conducted 

 by nature, as it would be by instinct, it searches for and 

 finds, without ever being deceived, the faces of the rocks 

 which are exposed to the south or the west; rises upon 

 them, and expands its branches in the form of an espalier, 

 with a regularity scarcely to be attained by art. 



Higher up, the severity of the climate admits nothing 

 but low shrubs, which can be entirely covered by the 

 first snow ; but still higher, this shelter is insufficient against 

 the cold and the length of the winter: nothing exists but 

 what is contained in'the earth ; the only vegetable produc- 

 tions found here are herbs with vivacious roots, and nature 

 has almost entirely banished from these places the annual^ 

 plants which would deceive its hopes, when in the course of 

 a summer reduced to a few days, and often to a few hours, 

 a gust of wind, or a frost, may blast its flowers scarcely ex- 

 panded, bring back winter, and terminate the year. 



On the other hand, no elevation checks those vivacious 

 kinds which, on the approach of the intense cold, entirely 

 re-enter under the double shelter of the snow and tl>e 

 earth, and revive from their roots on the first fine weather ; 

 their duration exhausts ail the changes of the seasons to 



attain 



