Appendix.] 



IV. On the Vegetation of high Mountains, translated from a Paper 

 of M. Ramond's in the Annates du Museum, Vol. 4. p. 395. By 

 Richard Anthony Salisbury, Esq. F, U.S. <$t. Secretary. 



Read April 2, 1811. 



An observing gardener, on ascending the high mountains of 

 our temperate region, is immediately struck with the vigour and 

 luxurious appearance of their vegetation. The plants he has 

 seen in the adjacent plains are changed in size, aspect, and form, 

 so that he hardly recognises the most common. Their stems are 

 elevated, their flowers larger, even the leaves of the trees have 

 acquired a size, which makes him doubt the identity of the spe- 

 cies. The woods are more impenetrable, the turf of the downs 

 closer, and a green more lively, fresh, and brilliant, colours every 

 thing, from the depths of the valley, up to those heights, where 

 the eye can discern nothing but naked rocks, and eternal 



Thus, endowed with a vigour elsewhere unknown, vegetables 

 there hasten with increased energy through the various periods 

 of their existence. Time, which to them moves slowly in the 

 plains, in the mountains flies. There, every thing is done rapid- 

 ly ; meteors dart after each other, and the air is in perpetual 

 agitation. From all these controlling causes, acting together 



* The first part of this sentence rather applies to purely mountainous plants, such 

 as Aster alpinus, Viola grandifiora, Aquilegia vulgaris, &c. than to all vegetables indis- 

 criminately : the latter part I should explain by saying, that the foliage of the trees 

 was rather diminished, in the dry plains, at the base of the Pyrfa&s, than enlarged by 

 mere elevation ; but along with elevation, to a certain extent, perpetual moisture and 

 food are washed down to their roots ; and such a situation, in France, is probably the 

 aboriginal one of the trees in question. Seer. 



