144 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



these Alpine roses unfold their brilliant flowers, with a 

 haste, as if they knew how costly were the moments of 

 their short summer-time. They seem to devote their whole 

 strength to the development of their flowers, and as their 

 stems are but short and partially buried in the ground, 

 their bright blossoms often appear to spring immediately 

 from the unsightly drift and gravel, in which they live. 

 Thus growing on the very edge of bare steep cliffs, of 

 vast dazzling snow fields, and dark-blue glaciers, are seen 

 these graceful little plants, decked with a profusion of 

 flowers of the purest and brightest colors. The tiny forget- 

 me-not of the Alps blossoms by the side of huge boulders 

 of rock, and sweet roes unfold their rich crowns at the 

 foot of massive blocks of ice, exhibiting a beautiful pic- 

 ture of loveliness mated with grandeur. 



The vegetable kingdom extends its colonies even into 

 the bowels of the earth the so-called subterranean flora 

 is large and beautiful. Wherever rain or surface water 

 can percolate, either through natural cavities or openings 

 made by the hand of man, there plants will appear, and 

 busily hide the nakedness of the rock. Far below the 

 soil on which we tread, plants thrive and adorn our globe. 

 When the miner first opens his shaft, or the curious 

 traveller discovers a new cave everywhere they find the 

 rough rock and the snow-white stalactite covered with a 

 delicate, graceful network of an usnea, or, as in the coal 

 mines near Dresden, a luminous fungus shines brightly, 

 and turns these regions of darkness into the semblance 

 of a begemmed and illuminated enchanter's palace. The 

 narrow, deep crevices of the glaciers, have a vegetation 



