CHARACTERISTICS OF ALPINE PLANTS 59 



pent-up eagerness, quantities of the year's earliest 

 flowers. Even away under the hollow dome of 

 icy snow, which resembled the snout of some 

 miniature glacier, tiny plants could be discerned 

 already busily developing their bloom-buds. Here, 

 late in August, was very early spring ! Here was 

 the Crocus and the Vernal Gentian, the Solda- 

 nella, Viola, and Oxlip. Here, too, was Trollius 

 europceus, the Globe Flower, and Ranunculus 

 alpestris not, as lower down in the normal 

 spring-time, making their usual growth of stem 

 and leaf before opening their flowers, but hurrying 

 up at once their blossoms on the shortest of thick, 

 fleshy stalks. Here was no time for easy loitering ; 

 here was but to do or die ! In another month, 

 perhaps less, snow might be expected to be again 

 in possession of the scene ; and then for another 

 nine weary months of seclusion perhaps, even, for 

 another two live-long years ! Truly, it is a state 

 of things which, much on all-fours with that of the 

 traditional toad and beetle, cannot but give pause 

 for thought and wonder, and the more so when 

 we think that there, under that remaining mass of 

 ice, are yet more hundreds of little Alpine plants 

 which can never hope to see the light of day this 

 year ! 



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