UP THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE. 599 



latter, it displays itself rapidly ; in such wise that a distance of a 

 few hundred yards in height is equivalent to a journey of several 

 degrees in latitude. It is scarcely necessary to add that the warmer 

 the climate, the higher we must rise to reach the belt or zone where 

 flourish the species peculiar to Arctic countries. 



In every land the flora of the lowest region of the mountains is 

 virtually the same as that of the adjacent plains, and it is only at an 

 elevation of 300 feet that we discern a positive change of aspect. 

 In temperate Europe, the Normandy fir and the Epicea begin to 

 form, at that altitude, forests of considerable extent. These trees are 

 from 120 to 150 feet in height, with a pyramidal configuration, 

 sombre foliage, and drooping boughs, arid whose bark takes to itself 

 a clothing of various lichens (notably Usneas), the long filaments, 

 branchy and yellowish, clinging to the branches of the most aged 

 individuals. In the shadow of these resinous trees thrive the 

 honeysuckle, the rose, the wild raspberry. At the base of the senile 

 trunks are developed the crawling or climbing stems, ever verdurous, 

 of various lycopodiums. In rocky localities the great yellow 

 gentian unfolds its long spikes of golden flowers, in company with 

 the elegant martagon, whose yellow-spotted red corollas are rolled up 

 turban- wise. At a higher level, between 4500 and 6000 feet, the 

 cembro pine, rare enough in France and England, more common in 

 the mountains of Central Europe, and the larch, whose leaves fall 

 every winter, are the last representatives of the true arborescent 

 Flora. 



Still continuing our ascent, we meet now with nothing but an 

 herbaceous vegetation. Here and there only, in turfy places and 

 abrupt ravines, a few birches and some dwarf willows display them- 

 selves, scarcely taller than the herbs which surround them. It is in 

 the rocky hollows also that the oleanders or ferruginous rhododen- 

 drons vegetate, sole representatives in Europe of a genus which 

 among the Asiatic mountains numbers several species. The Flora of 

 the Alpine prairies is, moreover, extremely varied. The Graminese 

 dominate therein, but associated with other families which enamel with 



