220 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
tion, and reproduction, is an extraordinary illus- 
tration of the fact, that the smallest and simplest 
organized object is in itself, and, for the part it 
was created to perform in the operations of nature, 
as admirably adapted as the largest and most 
complicated. 
Saussure, the celebrated geologist, appears to 
have been the first scientific person who noticed 
this production, for in his Voyages dans les Alpes 
he states that he found considerable patches of it 
on the summit of the Brevent at Chamounix after 
a fall of snow, so long ago as the year 1760, and 
afterwards very frequently and in great abundance 
in his wanderings over the Pennine Alps, and par- 
ticularly on the Col du Géant. After this period 
several eminent botanists collected it in various 
places; Ramond on the snow-capped peaks of 
the Pyrenees, and Sommerfeldt on the Dovrefjeld 
and other lofty hills in Norway. In March 1808, 
red or rather rose-coloured snow fell in consider- 
able quantities in the Tyrol, and on the moun- 
tains of Carinthia in Illyria; and over Carnia, 
Cadore, Belluno, and Feltre, to such an extent 
that the hills were covered with it to the depth of 
six feet. Ten years later, it is recorded that 
enormous quantities of the same substance were 
spread like a bloody pall over the Apennines and 
the other Italian hills, occasioning no small alarm 
