Appendix.] of high Mountains. iy 



the temperate point. Yet, on a nearly bare rock, I have there 

 gathered as many as forty-eight species of vegetables, excluding 

 cryptogamous plants : of these, one only, which perhaps I may 

 never find again, was annual. At Nieuvelle, a place 250 metres 

 higher than the Pic du Midi, where the thermometer in summer 

 never rises to more than 8 degrees of Reaumur, I have in five jour- 

 nies collected twelve different perennials. On the top of Mont 

 Perdu, at an elevation of 8500 metres, even in the bosom of per- 

 manent snows, but on rocks whose sloping situation had cleared 

 them of snow, I have seen six di fferent plants very vigorous. Here, 

 in one of the hottest days of a summer remarkable for its heat, the 

 thermometer only rose to 55° above the point of congelation, and 

 it undoubtedly falls in winter to 25 or 30: nor is it certain, that 

 those six plants, found in a season which melted more snow than 

 usual, are regularly uncovered every year. Besides, I have seen 

 some of them on the borders of the perpetual snow, with only half 

 of their stems exposed and vegetating, the other half buried in 

 it,* and it is probable, that many of them do not see the light ten 

 times in a century, running through the whole course of their 

 vegetation in a few short weeks, and doomed afterwards, to sleep 

 through a winter of many years. 



Plants subjected to so singular a mode of existence are not 

 among the species which grow in the plains of our temperate re- 

 gions : they belong exclusively to such as grow on the summits 

 of mountains, or near the poles. Norway, Lapland, and Greenland, 

 furnish plants analogous to those of the Swiss Alps and Pyrenees, 

 but few, or possibly none of them, are seen in Siberia, Kamschatka, 

 or even in the polar regions of America. One would hardly have 

 supposed so great a diversity of vegetable productions in coun- 



* A similar case occurred in a vine at Chapel Allerton, planted in the open air, at 

 some distance from the stove ; a branch of which, however, being introduced into the 

 stove early in January, was loaded with clusters of grapes, before any of the buds ex- 

 posed to the open air, shot out. Seer. 



