112 FLOWER-FIELDS OF ALPINE SWITZERLAND 



through Nature Study. For Nature is too far- 

 sighted to be dogmatic, too capable to be 

 academic ; she leaves an illimitable margin for 

 what is right, incidentally giving a complete ex- 

 position of the truth of our much employed, but 

 much neglected adage, " All roads lead to Rome." 

 Now, in these two Swiss Rhododendrons there 

 is excellent occasion for noting two very different 

 means of offering highly effective resistance to 

 a common foe. The foe is drought — the drought 

 of the hot, ungenerous, porous moraine, and of 

 the rapid, rocky, sun-baked, wind-swept slope. 

 Mountain circumstance, such as is affected for the 

 most part by these Rhododendrons, is the out- 

 come of comparatively recent disturbance ; soil is 

 in the forming, and what there is of it but thinly 

 coats a tumbled bed of crevassed rocks and 

 boulders. Casual observation may lead visitors 

 to suppose the Swiss Alpine climate to be by 

 no means devoid of moisture and to be liable 

 at all seasons to its fair share of damp, all- 

 enveloping cloud and fog, and to storms of snow 

 and rain. And casual observation will be right. 

 But no section of the globe's face is more 

 thoroughly and more promptly drained than that 

 of the Alps, and a " deluge " of rain is like so 



