82 ALPINE FLOWERS. Part I. 



showing its latest flowers. Anthericum Liliago is very plentiful 

 and pretty ; and we see all this by the side of a well-beaten 

 path, from which, no doubt, every rare plant has been gathered. 

 Trifolium, Dianthus, Melampyrum, AnthyUis, and Euphorbia 

 struggle for the mastery wherever a little grass has a chance 

 to spread out, and every chink and small hole in 'the rocks 

 where a little decomposed mould has accumulated supports 

 some vegetation. 



After a walk of three hours, I reach the top, having often 

 stopped to admire the magnificent and varied views. From the 

 bottom the visitor might have expected a stony barren mountain 

 top, a contracted space, with stunted, if rare forms of vegetation ; 

 but it is an immense plateau, stretching miles in length, and 

 covered with the greenest and freshest verdure. The best 

 meadows of England, or even the Green Isle, could not vie 

 with it in these points, while the grass is gay with flowers to 

 which they are strangers, and here and there young plants of 

 the great yellow Gentian, with their large and handsome leaves, 

 act as the " foliage plants " of the region. Trees there are 

 none ; but occasionally the Hazel, Cotoneaster, and other shrubs 

 form a little group, and perhaps enclose some spot, so that the 

 cattle that are driven up here in the summer months cannot eat 

 down the flowers there. They were but lately driven up, and had 

 not yet injured the beauty of the fair pasture elsewhere. The air 

 is delightfully fresh and sweet, and carries with it the tinkling of 

 the bells from the numerous cattle that are now grazing here. 

 The mountain is of a limestone formation, but now and then 

 I meet with a great block of solid granite, a remembrancer of 

 the days when enormous glaciers from the far off Mont Blanc 

 range stretched to this, and when the rich and pleasant valley of 

 the Alps was not. In several places there is a large expanse 

 of well-worn rock, a. level well-denuded mass, with cracks in it, 

 in which Polypodium Robertiamim and other Ferns grow luxu- 

 riantly. The surface is indented with roundish hollows, as if 

 great hzards and salamanders had left their impress on it ; these 

 have in the course of ages become filled with a few inches of 

 mould from decomposed moss, &c., and in them grow Vacci- 

 niums. Saxifrages, and Ferns, quite as well as if the "most 

 perfect drainage " were secured. I tore up some flakes of plants 

 here as easily as if they had been carefully detached from the 

 rocks before, so lightly did they grow in the smooth hollows. 



