VEGETATION OF HIGH MOUNTAINS. 1/ 



of ihe species. The woods are more impenetrable, the turf of 

 the downs closer, and a green more lively, fresh, and brilliant, 

 colours every thing, from the depths of the valley, up to those 

 heights, where the eye can discern nothing but naked rocks and 

 eternal snows*. 



Thus, endowed with a vigour elsewhere unknown, vegetables ?£]*[£ °^T* 

 there hasten with increased energy through the various periods 

 of their existence. Time, which to them moves slowly in the 

 plains, in the mountains flies. There, every thing is done rapid- 

 ly -, meteors dart after each other, and the air is in perpetual 

 agitation. From all these controlling causes, acting together 

 in full force, germination, florescence, and fructification take 

 place almost simultaneously. Sometimes, with a wind blowing 

 from the souih, with a heavy shower, or with a scorching sun, 

 the face of the meadows, downs, and forests, in a moment 

 changes, and the whole of a particular species seems to vanish ; 

 in fact, there, every fine day is a spring to some particular as- 

 semblage of vegetables, or to some of the inaccessible heights 

 in which they grow. 



To this picture, another succeeds. If we examine the moun- Their localme* 

 j II- i L i- m j -A nl0re distinct, 



tains and valhes, every place has its peculiar soil, every dirrer- 



ent elevation its peculiar climate, and each of them its charac- 

 teristic vegetables. In the plains, these vegetable assemblages 

 occupy vast spaces, the limits of which are too extensive, and 

 indeterminate, to be easily perceived. On the contrary, in the 

 mountains, they are confined to narrow limits, which the 

 eye often takes in at one view. In a gentle rising extended 

 between two dales, in a pile of rocks, or in a cliff, which the 

 traveller ascends in a few moments, he finds the perpetual 

 barriers of those productions, which nature has been pleased to 

 separate. 



Among the various causes of these separations, one seems to P art,cu Ja r . g* 



* The first part of this sentence rather applies to purely mountainous 

 plants, such as aster alfinus, viola grandijivru, uquilegia vulgaris, &c, 

 than to all vegetables indiscriminately; the latter part I should explain 

 by saying, that the foliage of the trees was rather diminished in the dry 

 plains at the base of the Pyreiu es t than enlarged by mere elevation, but, 

 along with elevation, to a certain extent, perpetual moisture and food 

 are washed down to their roots; and such a situation in France, is pro 

 bably the aboriginal one of the trees in question. Sec* 



Vol, XXXIV.— No. 156, 



reign. 



