THE PAGE OF NATURE. 37 



their native soil, when these mountains existed as islands 

 in the midst of an immense glacial sea which swept over 

 what is now the continent of Europe. When this sea 

 retired, owing to the elevation of the land, and its 

 islands became mountain peaks and ranges, the tiny 

 plants which imparted to them their first faint tinge of 

 verdure still remained, finding the same conditions of 

 temperature, shade, and moisture among the clouds as 

 they formerly found on the shore of an icy sea. Thus 

 all the Alpine plants found on the summits of our 

 loftiest hills are Norwegian or Arctic species. They are 

 besides the oldest living plants in the world, each of 

 them, even the very humblest moss or saxifrage, having 

 a pedigree which extends into the misty past, thousands 

 of years before the creation of man. What an intense, 

 almost human interest, gathers around these tiny mosses 

 and fragile flowers, which bloom like lone stars in a 

 midnight sky, in the very hoof -marks of the storm, 

 when we reflect that they are the last of their race, the 

 scanty remains of what was once for many ages the 

 general Flora of the whole of Europe. True patriots, 

 they have clung to their native homes, although they 

 have changed their very nature; retiring before the in- 

 roads of the host of gaudy flowers which invaded our 

 valleys and woods from the east, to the storm-scalped 

 summits of the Highland mountains, and behind the icy 

 battlements of the Arctic regions ! Upwards of thirty- 

 four species are confined to the lofty ranges in the centre 

 of Scotland, especially the Braemar and Breadalbane 

 mountains, which form the most important part of the 

 great Grampian range, and contain the most extensively 



