£0 VEGETATION OF HI6H MOT7TS"TAINS. 



at 35J2 yards, find again, was annual. At Nieuville, a place 250 metres higher 

 than the Picdu Midi,\vhere the thermometer in summer never 

 \ rises to more than S degrees, I have, in five journies, collected 



at 3825 yards, j 2 different perennials. On the top of Mont Perdu, at an eleva- 

 tion of 3500 metres, even in the bosom of permanent snows, 

 but on rocks the sloping situation of which had cleared them 

 of snow, I have seen six different plants very vigorous. Here, 

 in one of the hottest days of a summer remarkable for its heat, 

 the thermometer only rose to 5*5° above the point of congelation, 

 and it undoubtedly falls in winter to 25 or 30 : nor is it certain, 

 that those 6 plants, found in a season which melted more snow 

 than usual, are regularly uncovered every year. Besides, I have 

 seen some of them on the borders of the perpetual snow, with 

 only half of their stems exposed and vegetating, the other half 

 buried in it*, and it is probable, that many of them do not see 

 the light ten times in a century, running through the whole 

 course of their vegetation in a few short weeks, and doomed 

 afterwards to sleep through a winter of many years. 

 These plants Plants subjected to so singular a mode of existence are not 



mountains! or arnon S tne species which grow in the plains of our temperate re- 

 the vicinity of gions : they belong exclusively tosuch as grow on the summits of 

 the poles. mountains, or near the poles. Norway, Lapland, and Greenland, 



■ furnish plants analogous to those of the Swiss Alps and Pyrenees j 

 but few, or possibly none of them, are seen in Siberia, Kams- 

 chatka, or even in the polar regions of America. One would 

 hardly have supposed so great a diversity of vegetable produc- 

 tions in countries so much alike and near each other, nor on the 

 other hand, so great a conformity as exists among the plants 

 of these countries, and the plants of some alpine regions distant 

 from them 40 degrees. 

 Plants not dls- * n ^ act ' we * earn ^ rom actua l observation, that the dissemi- 

 seminated in nation of vegetables is not always regulated in parallel distances 

 tudefe. 6 atl " fr° m ^ c et l liator J tnat V a certain number of plants, confined 

 by their constitution to a peculiar climate, are to be found to a 

 certain distance under the same latitudes, many others, on the 



* A similar case occurred in a vine at Chapel AlUrton, planted in the 

 open air, at some distance from the stove ; a branch of which, however, 

 being introduced into the stove early in January, was loaded with cluster* 

 «f grapes, before any of the buds exposed to the open air, shot out. — 

 See. 



con* 



