ALPINES AT HOME IN SWITZERLAND. 45 



assistance, for not only do the gorgeous colours attract 

 the bees, the butterflies, and the other insects, but they 

 play an important part in the absorption of heat, in 

 the process whereby light is transformed into heat. 

 Herein may be seen one of the uses of the coverings of 

 the Alpine Buttercup and of the Alpine Anemone. 



Long might we linger over them, but two thousand 

 feet yet remain to be climbed, so, setting ourselves 

 resolutely to work we plunge knee-deep into the snow- 

 drifts, and after traversing them, breast the steep 

 hillsides, and with a final scramble over the loose 

 boulders, tilted at all angles one against the other, we 

 stand at last on the summit of the Pic, nearly 10,000 

 feet above the sea. What words are adequate to 

 describe the view which now meets our gaze ? All 

 around is a circle of snow peaks ; the giants of the Ober- 

 land, of the Zermatt district, and of Savoy — Jungfrau, 

 Eiger, Matterhorn, and Dent Blanche, Grand Combin, 

 and the monarch of Europe — Mont Blanc. They are 

 not all clear at once, but all come into view and then 

 are hidden under the white clouds which pass along the 

 horizon. Above, the bright sun of a brilliant June 

 day ; around, the peaks of eternal snow ; about, the 

 stillness of the Alpine solitudes ; a quiet only broken 

 by the softened roar of the torrent in the valley some 

 thousands of feet below, or the hum of a passing bee 

 which has strayed from the flowery pastures above 

 the Pines. 



In one of his books Ruskin has said that the higher 

 mission of mountains is " to fill the thirst of the human 

 heart for the beauty of God's working, and startle 



