26 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



and blue over the steep declivities. As the snow 

 melts, upward, the flowers open in zones, one after 

 another, upon the mountain sides, so that you can 

 mark your ascent by the variations in the flora, 

 and the different successive stages of development 

 reached by the most persistent kinds at various 

 levels. 



There is one adventurous little plant, however, 

 among these competing kinds, which in its eager- 

 ness to make the most of the short alpine summer 

 does not even wait, like its neighbours, for the 

 melting of the snow, but, vastly daring, begins to 

 grow under the surface of the ice-sheet, and melts 

 a way up for itself by internal heat, like a vegetable 

 furnace. It may fairly be called a slow-combustion 

 stove, not figuratively, but literally. It burns itself 

 up in order to melt the ice above it. This won- 

 derful plant is the alpine soldanella, the hardest 

 and one of the prettiest of mountain flowers ; it 

 opens its fringed and pensile blue blossoms in the 

 very midst of the snow, often showing its slender 

 head above a thin layer of ice, where it fear- 

 lessly displays its two sister bells among the frozen 

 sheet which still surrounds its stem in the most 

 incredible fashion. 



So much every tourist to the Alps in May 

 must have noticed for himself, for whenever he 

 reaches the edge of the melting ice-sheet he can 

 see the ice pierced by innumerable twin pairs 

 of these dainty and seemingly delicate blossoms. 

 Comparatively few observers, however, have pro- 

 ceeded to notice that the soldanella, fragile as it 



