504 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONUN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



the smallest village and its surroundings with an eye to their chief 

 source of income — the tourist traffic. Their hotels are the best in 

 the world; even off the beaten path of travel one is sure to find a 

 warm welcome in some well kept, clean, and reasonably cheap inn 

 or pension. 



The abundant rainfall of the Forest Cantons and the melting 

 snows not only supply tlie moisture needed for a luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion, but they furnish in the shape of waterfalls delightful attrac- 

 tions to the Alpine scenery. The falls vary in size from the tiny 

 but decorative tricklings that are wholly dependent for existence 

 on intermittent rains to the more or less permanent cataracts largely 

 fed by the eternal snows. More than that, water power is a valua- 

 able asset. One of its numberless local uses is its cheap and uni- 

 versal employment in electrically lighting the whole country, the 

 surplus j^ower being sold to neighboring countries. 



One must not forget the birds in this brief account of the glories 

 of the Forest Cantonal scenery. The notes of the cuckoo, the black- 

 bird, the song sparrow, the nightingale, and other songsters are heard 

 in this delectable land. One might, on a tramp over sub-Alpine 

 hills and valleys, recall Marlowe's lines: 



Shallow rivers to whose falls 

 Melodious birds sing madrigals. 



Over a hundred years ago Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, one 

 of our foremost authorities on American ornithology, wrote for an 

 Italian journal a comparative account ^ of the birds of Rome and 

 Philadelphia, in which he showed that although many of the 247 

 species observed in the former metropolis differ in some respects 

 from 281 avian visitors to the American city, there are in numerous 

 instances few external characters to distinguish the Old World from 

 the New World birds. Much the same experience has characterized 

 the present writer's desultory adventures with Alpine flora and 

 fauna, since the differences between the floAvers and birds of, let us 

 say, California and the Forest Cantons, are not, after all, so very 

 great. 



In the present paper it is proposed to emphasize the differences 

 and similarities of some Swiss species of wild flowers not unfamiliar 

 to Americans, and it may be said at the outset that one suffers from 

 an einbarras de Hchesse in such a study because, as many botanical 

 authorities have noted, no country in the world can produce in a 

 similar limited area as many species of indigenous plants as the 

 two cantons of Schwyz and Lucerne. Stuart Thompson, for ex- 

 ample, has estimated that, excluding varieties and subspecies, there 



* Spocchio comparativo della oniitologia di Roma e di Filadolfia. Nuova Gior- 

 nale dei Letterati, 1827. 



