A PLANT THAT MELTS ICE 27 



is, actually forces itself up through a solid coat 

 of ice, not exactly by hewing its way, but by 

 melting a path for itself in the crystal sheet above 

 it. Yet such is really the case ; it warms the 

 ice as it goes. The buds begin to grow on the 

 frozen soil before the ground is bare, under the 

 hardened and compressed snow of the n'evt 

 which at its edge is always ice-like in texture. 

 They then bore their way up by internal heat 

 (like that of an animal) through the sheet that 

 covers them ; and they often expand their delicate 

 blue or white blossoms, with the scalloped edges, 

 in a cup-shaped hollow above, while a sheet of 

 refrozen ice, through which they have warmed 

 a tunnel or canal for themselves, still surrounds 

 their stems and hides their roots and their flattened 

 foliage. This is so strange a miracle of nature 

 that it demands some explanation ; the method 

 by which the soldanella obtains its results is no 

 less marvellous than the results themselves which 

 it produces. 



The winter leaves of soldanella, which hibernate 

 under the snow just as truly as the squirrel or 

 the dormouse hibernates in its nest, are large, 

 leathery, tough, and evergreen. They are, in 

 fact, just living reservoirs of fuel (like the fat of 

 the dormant bear), which the plant lays by during 

 the heat of summer in order to burn it up again 

 in spring for the use of its flowers. When I use 

 this language, you- will think at first I am speaking 

 figuratively. But I am not ; I mean it in just 

 as literal a sense as when I say that the coal in 



