In the following year I went early in June in search of another Alpine delight, the spring flowers--not those of the highest "downs" and sheltering rocks 8000 or 9000 feet above sea-level, but those of the higher meadows, where the pine forests are beginning to thin out, and rich crops are cut before July by the skilful workers of the great Swiss industry, that of cow-herding and the production of cheese. It is difficult to define properly the term "Alpine" as applied to flowers. It is now used by horticulturists very generally for those exquisite small plants, the Saxifrages, Androsacæ, Gentians, etc., which grow in the highest regions to which plant-life extends--regions which are often covered by the winter's snow until June, and even late into that month. Some of these plants (as, for instance, the Soldanellas--those little lilac-coloured flowers like pendent foolscaps which are allied to our primrose--and the crocus and the butterbur (Petasites)) actually blossom beneath the snow and push their open flowers through it to the sunlight. Others of these "higher Alpines" have a peculiar mode of growth related to their special conditions of life. Their stems are very short and their foliage closely set, so that they form compact tufts or cushions, on which their short-stalked brilliant little flowers are dotted. The fact is they have not time in the short summer of these high regions to grow long stems. Their flowers are produced on low-lying parts of the plant, which carry small and abundant green leaves, but never send up long leaf-bearing stems. Not only do they thus do quickly, and without needless upward growth, what they have to do--namely, expose green leaves to the sunlight for nutrition and their flowers to the fertilizing visits of insects so as to ripen their reproductive seeds--but they benefit by keeping close to the warmth of the ground, which is heated by the strong sunshine, and is three and a half degrees higher in temperature than the cold moist air. In similar positions in low-lying regions the difference between the temperature of the air and that of the surface of the ground is not as much as one degree.