32 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



secured its survival and success in the crowded 

 world of the alpine pastures. For you must 

 not forget that while to you and me the Alps 

 are an unpeopled solitude, to the alpine plants 

 they are a veritable London of competing life- 

 types. 



The canny plant lays its plans deep, too, and 

 begins well beforehand. It has made prepara- 

 tions. All the previous summer it has been 

 spreading its round leaves to the mountain sun, 

 and laying by material for next year's flowering 

 season. Leaves, you know, are the mouths and 

 stomachs of plants ; and the soldanella has a type 

 of leaves admirably adapted to its peculiar pur- 

 pose : expanded in the sunlight, they eat carbon 

 and hydrogen the live-long summer, and turn the 

 combined oxygen loose upon the air under the 

 influence of the sun. By the time winter comes, 

 they are thick and leathery, filled with fuel for 

 the spring, and, of course, evergreen. They have 

 also long stalks, which enable them during the 

 summer to stretch up to the light ; but in autumn 

 they descend and flatten themselves against the 

 soil, so as not to be crushed by the snows of 

 winter. The first of my illustrations (No. i) 

 shows a group of these fat leaves, seen from 

 above, and flattened against the ground in ex- 

 pectation of the snow-sheet. 



The material laid by in the thickened leaves 

 consists of starches, protoplasm, and other rich 

 foodstuffs. The snow falls, and the leaves, pro- 

 tected by their hard and leathery covering, re- 



