5 72 On the Stale of Vegetation on high Mountains. 



from presenting the same vegetation on the same parallels : 

 while a multitude of plants faithful to each of these parts of 

 the world, faithful even to certain subdivisions of these 

 grand divisions, brave all those obstacles which diversity of 

 temperatures oppose to them, to propagate in a direction 

 absolutely contrary to. that to which they are called by the 

 conformity of climate. 



. But, not to wander from the subject, it is thus, for ex- 

 ample, that several remarkable vegetables of. Sardinia, Si- 

 cily, and Italy, climb the Alps, pass over them, and spread 

 to the Lower Germany, without yielding to the invitations 

 of climate, which would carry them to the contrary side. 

 It is thus that the Pyrenees receive from Spain a great num-. 

 ber of the plants of Barbary, and convey them to the western 

 part of France. The meadow Saffron, which grows in the 

 north of Africa, shows itself in Andalusia, Castile, Arragon, 

 the Pyrenees,and descends even to the department of Landes: 

 the Hyacint hits tardisus, the Narcissus bulbocodium, have the 

 same origin and pursue the same route; the Anthericum bi- 

 color, setting out from Algiers, traverses the same chain and 

 arrives at Anjou; the Scilla iimbellifera, the Saffranum mal- 

 tifida, go from the Pyrenees to England, without any of 

 these plants proceeding laterally to meet, those which the 

 Alps receives in like manner from the south to proceed to 

 the northern parts of Germany. 



But it is in the large valleys of the Pyrenees hollowed out 

 from north to south, that these directions assume a char 

 racter altogether striking and singular. 



I find the large Dianthas plumarius at the entrance 

 of the valley of Canopan and that of Gavarnic. It tra- 

 verses them entirely without entering any of the oblique 

 valleys which open into it. The VBrbascum miconi, that 

 beautiful and rare plant, which neither belongs to the genus 

 in which Linnaeus has placed it, nor perhaps even to any 

 family of plants now established, and which having a for 

 reign air amidst our vegetables of Europe, is distinguished 

 among them as the alcyon is among our indigenous birds, 

 The verbascum miconi affects the same preference for the 

 same direction. It is found in all the large valleys of the 

 Pyrenees, where it shows itself indifferent to all soils and 

 ail exposures; and the same soils and the same exposures 

 do not attract it into any of the collateral valleys. I could 

 quote a multitude of examples of the same fact ; but it will 

 be sufficient to mention only one, that of box. This shrub, ? 

 so robust, grows in the mountains like the most delicate 

 plants ; on the first regions of the Pyrenees it covers all the 

 5 hills 



