98 HIGH LIFE. 



goes in the size of the trees, till at last they tail off into 

 mere shrubs and bushes. This diminution an old 

 commonplace of tourists is a marked characteristic of 

 mountain plants, and it depends, of course, in the main 

 upon the effect of cold, and of the wind in winter. Cold, 

 however, is by far the more pctent facto 1 ; of the two, 

 though it is the least often insisted upon : and this can 

 be seen in a moment by anyone who remembers that 

 trees shade off in just the self-same manner near the 

 southern limit of permanent snow in the Arctic regions. 

 And the way the cold acts is simply this : it nips off the 

 young buds in spring in exposed situations, as the chilly 

 sea-breeze does with coast plants, which, as we com- 

 monly but incorrectly say, are " blown sideways" from 

 seaward. 



Of course, the lower down one gets, and the nearer to the 

 soil, the warmer the layer of air becomes, both because 

 there is greater radiation, and because one can secure 

 a little more shelter. So, very far north, and very near 

 the snow-line on mountains, you always find the vegeta- 

 tion runs low and stunted. It takes advantage of every 

 crack, every cranny in the rocks, every sunny little nook, 

 every jutting point or wee promontory of shelter. And 

 as the mountain plants have been accustomed for ages 

 to the strenuous conditions of such cold and wind-swept 

 situations, they have ended, of course, by adapting them- 

 selves to that station in life to which it has pleased the 

 powers that be to call them. They grow quite naturally 

 low and stumpy and rosette-shaped : they are compact 

 of form and very hard of fibre : they present no surface 

 of resistance to the wind in any way ; rounded and boss- 



