4 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [15:1— Jan., 1919 



right behind the nearest ledge. You are surprised, almost dis- 

 agreeably surprised. You imagined that you were all alone up 

 there. You instinctively felt that you were on soil on which no 

 other living being ever stepped and now your illusion is lost. Of 

 course there is no real excuse for that attitude but yet it is a sort 

 of a subconscious feeling which almost everybody gets when he 

 enters the higher regions of the Alps. But you are not alone. 

 There is some animal. Now you see its head cautiously peeping 

 up behind the ledge; it is a marmot, a woodchuck like animal 

 that often lives in the highest vegetative fringe of the Alps. He 

 gazes at you curiously for some time, eyes you suspiciously, then 

 suddenly disappears in a hole, no doubt to tell his brothers and 

 sisters that he just saw a strange looking animal that was gazing 

 at the world in the most pensive fashion. 



All this, then, would have given you an idea of surroundings of 

 the mountain pine. If I had had time, I would portray this tree — 

 this mountain dweller — not only in its peaceful moods but also in 

 those sombre and more moving moments of a storm. I would 

 have shown you that same valley full of whirling seething masses of 

 snow and I would have tried to make you realize that feeling of 

 insignificance and smallness which comes to him who, unused to the 

 mountains, watches them for the first time from that lofty height. 

 This would do much to give meaning to this Pine. You really 

 could not but appreciate it more fully. But knowing how tedious 

 a lengthy description becomes to the reader or listener, I shall pass 

 over this and say a few words about the poetical life of the pine 

 which is that element of interest which the pine gets from the 

 associations which it has for us. 



Poets have been rather fond of pines and though they mostly 

 lavished their affection on the whole tribe in general, yet there are 

 certain passages which apply particularly well to the mountain 

 pine. Such as : "Rooted upon a Cape that overhung the entrance 

 to a mountain gorge: whereon the wintry shade of a peak was 

 flung long after rise of sun. There did I clutch the granite with 

 my feet, there shake my boughs above the roaring gulf." or "I 

 felt the mountain wall below me shake, vibrant with sound and 

 through my branches poured the glorious gust." 



Surely these passages are very apjjropriate. They are to my 

 mind real jewels in poetic description. Yet it seems to me that 

 somehow or other, they do not touch that deeper element of 



