io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



HIGH LIFE. 



EVERYBODY knows mountain flowers are beautiful. As one 

 rises up any minor height in the Alps or the Pyrenees, be- 

 low snow-level, one notices at once the extraordinary brilliancy 

 and richness of the blossoms one meets there. All Nature is 

 dressed in its brightest robes. Great belts of blue gentian hang 

 like a zone on the mountain slopes ; masses of yellow globe-flower 

 star the upland pastures, nodding heads of soldanella lurk low 

 among the rugged bowlders by the glacier's side. No lowland 

 blossoms have such vividness of coloring, or grow in such con- 

 spicuous patches. To strike the eye from afar, to attract and 

 allure at a distance, is the great aim and end in life of the Al- 

 pine flora. 



Now, why are Alpine plants so anxious to be seen of men and 

 angels ? "Why do they flaunt their golden glories so openly be- 

 fore the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath 

 their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring 

 violet ? The answer is. Because of the extreme rarity of the 

 mountain air. It's the barometer that does it. At first sight, 

 I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as the 

 traditional connection between Goodwin Sands and Tenterden 

 Steeple. But, like the amateur stories in country papers, it is 

 " founded on fact," for all that. (Imagine, by the way, a tale 

 founded entirely on fiction ! How charmingly aerial !) By a 

 roundabout road, through varying chains of cause and effect, the 

 rarity of the air does really account in the long run for the beau- 

 ty and conspicuousness of the mountain flowers. 



For bees, the common go-betweens of the loves of the plants, 

 cease to range about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below 

 snow-level. And why ? Because it's too cold for them ? Oh, dear, 

 no ; on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermome- 

 ter does'nt rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the 

 honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conven- 

 tional character demands of them among the golden cups of the 

 first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a tem- 

 perature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously 

 on his communistic errand. But bees, one must remember, have 

 heavy bodies and relatively small wings : in the rarefied air of 

 mountain heights they can't manage to support themselves in the 

 most literal sense. Hence their place in these high stations of the 

 world is taken by the gay and airy butterflies, which have lighter 

 bodies and a much bigger expanse of wing-area to buoy them up. 

 In the valleys and plains the bee competes at an advantage with the 

 butterflies for all the sweets of life, but in this broad subglacial 



