ALPINE AND ARCTIC PLANTS 433 



by the frost, but not disturbed or rounded by water.^ Behind 

 us is the deep trench-hke ravine out of which we have dimbed ; 

 on the left hand a long row of secondary summits stretching 

 out from Mount Washington to the south-westward, and desig- 

 nated by the names of a series of American statesmen. In front 

 this range descends abruptly in great wooded spurs or buttresses 

 to the valley of the Amonoosook, which shines in silvery 

 spots through the trees far below. On our right hand towers 

 the peak of Mount Washington, still more than a thousand feet 

 above us, and covered with angular blocks, as if it were a pile 

 of fragments rather than a solid rock. These stones all around 

 and up to the summit of the mountain, are tinted pale green by 

 the map lichen (Lectdea geographicd)^ which tinges in the same 

 way the alpine summits of European mountains. Between the 

 blocks and on their sheltered sides nestle the alpine flowering 

 plants, of which twenty species or more may be collected on 

 this shoulder of the mountain, and some of which extend them- 

 selves to the very summit, where Alsine Groenlandica and the 

 little tufts of deep green leaves oi Diapensia Lapponica with a 

 few Carices seem to luxuriate. Animal life accompanies these 

 plants to the summit, near which I saw a family of the snow 

 bird, evidently summer residents here, instead of seeking the 

 far north for a breeding place, as is the habit of the species, and 

 a number of insects, conspicuous among which was a brown 

 butterfly of the genus Hipparchia. Shortly before sundown, 

 when the thermometer at the summit house was fast settling 

 toward the freezing point, a number of swallows were hawking 

 for flies at a great height above the highest peak. To what 



1 Hitchcock has since found travelled blocks on the summit, bearing evi- 

 dence to its submergence under the waves of the glacial sea, and to the 

 grinding of ice floes upon it. Such a fact helps to account for the broken 

 character of the summit, and also implies that unequal subsidence of the 

 land elsewhere referred to, since we know of no agency which could carry 

 boulders so high as the present mountain top. 



