SUMMER IN THE ALPS 71 



person until sundown unless he stays his progress 

 during the day, and of set and determined purpose 

 slays them nimbly one by one. We will be wise 

 in our generation, and take this short-cut ! There 

 is something reaHy terrible in the persistence of a 

 fly, and when, instead of one, there are sixty or 

 a hundred flies great iridescent, green-eyed 

 creatures of stealthy habits, making their presence 

 known only w r hen they have dug their proboscis 

 deep into the flesh the persistence easily becomes 

 maddening ! No wonder the cattle will often 

 stampede madly about the mountain- side, driven 

 frantic by this terrible persistence ! No wonder 

 that it is often thought kinder to confine the cows 

 to their sheds until sundown, when * the wicked 

 cease from troubling ' ! 



There is comparatively little of interest in the 

 forest through which we are now passing. Here 

 and there, by the side of our path, and where there 

 is more or less a break in the trees, are a few of 

 that graceful little Masterwort, Astrantia minor, 

 in company with a few plants of Saocifraga rotuncti- 

 folia and the yellow Wolfs-bane, or Monkshood 

 (Aconitum Lycoctonum). Occasionally at the base 

 of a pine there is some specimen of Broom-rape, or 

 Orobanche* that curious Orchid-like group of plants 



