434 ALPINE AND ARCTIC PLANTS 



species they belonged I could not ascertain. Possibly the cliff 

 swallows find breeding places in the sides of the ravines, 

 and rise over the hill top to bask in the sunbeams, after the 

 mountain has thrown its shadows over their homes. 



To return to the Alpine flora which is peculiar to the peaks  

 of these mountains — are the species comprising it autochthones 

 originating on these hill tops, and confined to them, or are they 

 plants occurring elsewhere, and if so, where? and how and 

 when did they migrate to their present abodes ? These are 

 questions which must occur to every one interested in geology, 

 botany, or physical geography. 



Not one of the Alpine plants of Mount Washington is peculiar 

 to the place. Nearly all of them are distinct from the plants of 

 the neighbouring lowlands, but they occur on other hills of New 

 England and New York, and on the distant coasts of Labrador 

 and Greenland, and some of them are distributed over the 

 Arctic regions of Europe, Asia and America. In short, they 

 are stragglers from that Arctic flora which encompasses the 

 north polar region, and extends in promontories and islands 

 along the high cold mountain summits far to the southward. 



Some of the humble flowerless plants of these hills are of 

 nearly world-wide distribution. I have already noticed the pale 

 green map lichen which tints the rocks of the Pyrenees, the 

 Alps, and the Scottish Highlands ; and the curious ring lichen 

 {Par7?ieHa centrifuga) paints its conspicuous rings and arcs of 

 circles alike on Mount Washington and the Scottish hills. A 

 little club moss {Lycopodium selago) is not only widely dis- 

 tributed over the northern hemisphere, but Hooker has recog- 

 nised it in the Antarctic regions. Not long ago we unrolled in 

 Montreal an Egyptian mummy, preserved in the oldest style of 

 embalming, and found that, to preserve the odour of the spices, 

 quantities of a lichen {Evernia furfuracea) had been wrapped 

 around the body, and have no doubt been imported into Egypt 

 from Lebanon, or the hills of Macedonia, for such uses. Yet 



