HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSS 2 P. 



THE FLOWERS YET FRESH FROM CHILDHOOD. 



By A. H. SWINTON. 



N gazing idly out of 

 the window at 

 Geneva the morn- 

 ing after arrival, a 

 long line of wild 

 crags bathed in a 

 soft and rosy mist, 

 with azure sha- 

 dows, rises to greet 

 the binoculars of 

 the wondering 

 tourist. Possibly, 

 in his hurry to get 

 off to Chamounix, 

 he will the next 

 moment forget the 

 beatific sight, or 

 consign it to dream- 

 land. Certainly, if 

 his conceit be a 

 sprig of edelweiss, 

 and his daughters' desire is to possess bunches of 

 alpine roses to grace their toilet-tables, they would 

 gather neither there ; where blushing cyclamens, 

 martagon lilies, astrantia tassels, pretty bead-like 

 berries, and Venus' looking-glasses, are Nature's 

 choicest nurslings. But let us not, then, forget that 

 Dr. Fauconnet, an antiquated adorer of this altar 

 of flowers, has strongly commended it to the notice 

 of the scientist who may desire to wander there 

 in search of the Doronicum pardalianchus. The 

 Saleve, as this hill is called, shelves with a mild 

 declivity to the west, but it breaks into a line of 

 limestone precipices on the east, that can only be 

 surmounted at places by footways and uncertain 

 tracks which are all more or less dangerous, so that 

 not a year passes by but what one hears of unwary 

 natives there hurled to destruction. Recently, to 

 facilitate an ascent, an electric railway, direct trac- 

 tion, has been constructed up as far as the Treize- 

 No. 343.— July 1893. 



Arbres, and the maidens of Geneva, in their fresh 

 summer prints, are already sighing that it is pretty at 

 the Pitons. 



The day is hot, and perspiration is rolling down 

 the forehead : a fly, akin to the cleg, is incessantly 

 pricking, and the turreted rock of the Pitons rises 

 overhead like a little toy into the fleecy sky ; and, 

 see, here trudges down the shoemaker of the village. 

 " Please to tell us whether we are on the right road 

 to the Pitons," we shout. "Yes, go on straight," 

 comes the echoing response. " Is the ascent very 

 difficult ? " we inquire. " No," is the reply. 



Onwards through the brushwood we tramp, 

 gathering yellow foxgloves and yellow salvias ; it is 

 the country of red and yellow, for the foxgloves 

 are here all yellow, and yellow campanulas appear 

 on the Juras. While thus meditating on the national 

 emblems, we discover that we have arrived at a little 

 vineyard where the fasciated grasshopper and Jersey 

 tiger-moth are fluttering like pink rags, the latter 

 closing its sandy-clay-shaded upper wings to vanish 

 on the parched footway. "My friends," cries the 

 woman who is watching her amber grapes, "if you 

 are not accustomed to our paths, pray take a guide or 

 pay a visit to the herbalist at St. Julien, but kindly 

 cross over the meadow and keep clear of my vines." 



Over the green knoll we go where the Chalk Hill 

 blues are sucking the vetches, and picking the greater 

 pimpinella in the ditch ; into the brushwood we 

 bound, by a shady track which leaves us lost in the 

 nut-bushes and blue-bells, where a thirsty erebia 

 butterfly comes and settles on our perspiring fingers. 

 Under the flickering boughs we creep to emerge on 

 to a slope dotted with fruit-trees, where we recline in 

 the shadows and listen to the grasshoppers playing 

 their operatic airs, with a green sod bestarred with 

 purple crocus spread out at our feet. See, the finest 

 of the musicians has a stain of blood-red under his 

 hind-legs that makes you think as you lay hold of it 

 that you have pricked your finger with one of the 



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