x FOREWORDS TO NEW EDITION 



high mountain-chains, whether they spring from 

 hot tropical plains or from green northern 

 pastures. Above the cultivated land these 

 flowers begin to occur on the fringes of the stately 

 woods ; they are seen in multitudes in the vast 

 pastures which clothe many great mountain-chains, 

 enamelling their soft verdure ; and also where 

 neither grass nor loose herbage can exist ; or where 

 feeble world-heat is quenched and mountains are 

 crumbled into ghastly slopes of shattered rock by the 

 contending forces of heat and cold, even there, amid 

 the glaciers, they spring from Nature's ruined battle- 

 ground, as if the mother of earth-life had sent up 

 her loveliest children to plead with the spirits of 

 destruction. 



Alpine plants fringe the vast fields of snow and 

 ice of the high mountains, and at great elevations 

 have often scarcely time to flower and ripen a 

 few seeds before they are again imbedded in the 

 snow ; while sometimes many of them may remain 

 beneath the surface for more than a year. 

 Enormous areas of the earth, inhabited by them, 

 are every year covered by a deep bed of snow. 

 Where the tall tree or shrub cannot exist in the 

 intense cold, a deep soft mass of down-like snow 

 settles upon these minute plants, a great cloud-borne 

 quilt, under which they safely rest, unharmed by the 

 alternations of frost and biting winds and moist and 

 spring-like days. It is the absence in our island of 

 this winter rest that is our chief difficulty, in leading 

 to " false starts" in growth, and so injuring certain 



