46 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
plants in the world, each of them, even the very 
humblest moss or saxifrage, having a pedigree 
which extends into the misty past, unknown ages 
before the creation of man. What an intense, 
almost human interest, gathers around these tiny 
mosses and fragile flowers, which bloom like lone 
stars in a midnight sky, in the very hoof-marks of 
the storm, when we reflect that they are the last 
of their race, the scanty remains of what was once 
for many ages the general Flora of the whole of 
Europe. True patriots, they have clung to their 
native homes, although they have changed their 
very nature; retiring before the inroads of the 
host of gaudy flowers which invaded our valleys 
and woods from the East, to the storm-scalped 
summits of the Highland mountains, and behind 
the icy battlements of the Arctic regions. Up- 
wards of fifty species are confined to the lofty 
ranges in the centre of Scotland, especially the 
Braemar and Breadalbane mountains, which form 
the most important part of the great Grampian 
range, and contain the most extensively and 
uniformly elevated land in Great Britain. These 
species are pre-eminently Arctic and Norwegian, 
and present many striking peculiarities which dis- 
tinguish them at a glance from the mosses of the 
woods and the valleys. Though confined to the 
shoulders and the summits of our loftiest moun- 
