cm the Surface oftlie Globe. g59 



grow more thaa a hundred fadioms beneath the highest limit of 

 this plant. In the zone which succeeds these trees, more ex- 

 posed to the impetuosity of the winds, would present too much 

 scope for their action, in the large cyme and broad leaves 

 which they possess. The pine, the yew, the fir, furnished with 

 a finely divided foliage, raise securely toward the regions of 

 perpetual snow their robust and branchless trunks. The ac- 

 tion of the winds no longer meeting the same resistance, is di-. 

 vided and loses its force among their short and slender leaves. 

 These trees, however, do not attain a greater elevation than 

 a thousand toises ; above this, woods of cratcBgus, and birch, 

 and tufts of hazel and willow, among which the rhododendrons 

 flourish, brave the cold and the tempests, to the height of twelve 

 hundred toises. Beyond this, appear, but with a much lower 

 stature, a multitude of beautiful and elegant shrubs, daphnes^ 

 passerina, globularia, creeping willows, and some ligneous cis- 

 tuses. 



Further on, to the region of snow, scarcely any more woody 

 vegetables are found, if we except some dwarf birches, some 

 stunted willows, scarcely a iew inches long. A short beautiful 

 and tufted sward springs every summer from beneath the 

 snowy mountains, and is covered with a multitude of pretty 

 little flowers with rosaceous petals, naked peduncles, and viva- 

 cious roots : this is tlie peculiar place of the numerous saxifra- 

 ges, elegant primulae, gentians, ranunculi, and a profusion of 

 other diminutive plants. The frightful nakedness of the poles 

 reigns upon the summits of these mountains loaded with per- 

 petual ice ; if there still remain some traces of vegetation, they 

 only exist in a ^evj lichens, which here, as elsewhere, endeavour, 

 but in vain, to lay the foundations of vegetation. 



Thus the traveller, having arrived on these mountains, at 

 the region of ice, has experienced, in the course of a few hours, 

 the different degrees of temperature which reign in each cli- 

 mate from the tropics to the poles ; he may have observed a 

 portion of the plants which grow from about the 45th degree 

 of latitude to the 70th, that is to say along a meridian of about 

 eight hundred leagues, a phenomenon which exists in all 

 high mountains, of both the Old and the New Continent, with 

 some modifications peculiar to the localities. : 



R S 



