8o 



ALPINE FLOWERS. 



Part I. 



green and bushless carpets of grass here and. there, which cuts 

 off vine, and corn, and meadow, from the slopes of the mountains. 

 Here in this, at half past six in the morning, the nightingale is 

 singing ; while white-headed eagles float aloft, now over the 

 lake, and now over plain and hill, sometimes on motion- 

 less wing, and yet rapidly and silently gliding along on the 

 look-out for prey. From floating bird in glowing air, perfumed 

 by wild Lily-bf-the-valley, the white bells of which may be 

 seen leaning out of it,s tufts of tender green, at the base of the 



Fig- 55- — In the woody region. 



bushes, to the flower-clad heaps of stone, and in every peep 

 which 'the eye obtains through the bush and wood to the villa- 

 dotted margins of the lake, the scene is one of unalloyed beauty 

 and abounding life — 



" A populous solitude of bees, and birds, 

 And fairy-formed and many-coloured things.'' 



Some magnificent gorges and precipices are gradually reached 

 and exposed to view, every crevice having some plant in it, and 

 all the ledges being clothed with the greenest grass or bushes, 

 the precipices being so well, covered to the very brows that the 



