LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 601 



Some of the plants which enrich the lofty slopes of the European 

 mountains are endowed with an agreeable aromatic odour, and with 

 keen stimulating properties. Such are the Artemisias and the 

 AchitteGB. To the former of these families belongs the Artemisia 

 (jlacialis, which the mountaineers consider an universal panacea, 

 and which enters into the composition of the famous liqueur of the 

 Chartreux. 



On the threshold of the eternal snows, under the influence of the 

 icy breezes, vegetation grows rarer and yet rarer, until it is reduced 

 to a few species which compensate for their insignificance by their 

 beauty. Such are the Campanula of Allioni, with its graceful bells 

 of blue ; the delicate Saxifraga, whose rosy flowers also expose their 

 beauties on the frost-bound shores of Spitzbergen ; the Soldanella of 

 the Alps ; the Ranunculus of the Glaciers ; numerous Androsellse, 

 some of which do not exceed a third of an inch in height ; finally, on 

 the extreme border, and straggling even on the moraines of the Glaciers, 

 where no other plant can live, the little Myosotis, which grows in 

 small tufts covered with white down, and starred with delicate blue 

 flowers. At a still higher level we find only a few lichens relieving 

 the monotonous surface of the rocks; and sometimes, flourishing under 

 unknown circumstances, the Protococcus nivalis, whose red globules 

 communicate to the snow a blood-red tint. 



The Mountain Flora will offer us, in other parts of the globe, the 

 same series of diminution, commencing with the groups which people 

 the low lands of each geographical zone, and terminating with those 

 which, at the level of the sea, are met with only in the Frozen 

 Zone. Some mountain-chains, however, possess genera or species 

 exclusively belonging to them. It is on the ridges of Atlas and 

 Lebanon, at an elevation of 3500 or 5400 feet, that the majestic 

 cedars spread their umbrageous branches. The cedars of Atlas attain 

 a stature of 120 to 140 feet, and their trunk measures, at the base, 

 from a yard to a yard and a half in diameter. " When young," says 

 M. Charles Martins,* " they have a pyramidal form ; but when they 

 * Charles Martins, " Du Spitzberg au Sahara.'' 



