The question often is asked, "Why is it that the same species of flower is brighter and stronger in colour when growing high up in the Alps than when growing in the lowlands and in our own country?" The fact is admitted; the blues of the blue-bells (Campanula), the bugloss, the forget-me-nots, the crimsons and purples of the geraniums and the pinks and the campions, and many others, are examples. Careful study and consideration of the facts have enabled botanists to show, in many instances, within recent years, that the peculiarities of form and also of colour of the stems, leaves, and flowers of plants are not mere unmeaning "accidents," but are definitely of advantage and of "survival value" to the species. Thus we have seen that the tuft-like cushions formed by high Alpine plants are explained. The purple and reddish colour of stalks and leaves like that of the red variety of the common beech has not always, as in that plant, the purpose of protecting the chlorophyll from destruction by too vivid sunlight. In Alpine plants it is often present on the underside of leaves and of the petals, and acts to the plant's benefit, absorbing light and converting it into heat. But it also seems in many cases to protect the juices of the plant from the destructive action of white light. It is held by some botanists that the bright colour of Alpine (and Norwegian) samples of a flower elsewhere of a paler colour is due to the direct action of the greater sunlight of the high regions in causing the formation of pigment. This is inadmissible. The sunlight cannot act in that way. It causes increased formation of nutriment by acting on the chlorophyll, and an Alpine plant thus highly charged with nutritive matters can afford to form more abundant pigment than a plant which enjoys less brilliant sunshine. The high-coloured Alpine flowers are a breed or race; a pale-coloured plant taken to the Alps from below does not itself become high coloured. It is a matter of natural selection. The occasional high-coloured "spontaneous" variations produced from seed have an advantage in the short summer of the high Alps. They attract the visits of the few insects in the short season more surely than do the paler individuals, and consequently they are fertilized and reproduce, whilst the race of the paler individuals dies out from failure to attract the insects. Thus we get a high-coloured race established in the mountains, a race that can make haste and seize the brief opportunities of the short but brilliant summer. There are many peculiarities of form and colour of plants the life conditions of which are diverse (e.g., woodland, moorland, aquatic, seashore, dry air, moist air, etc.), which can be shown by accurate observation to be specially related to those life conditions. Those conditions allow the peculiarities to survive and establish a race, in some cases a species, whilst preventing the maturity or destroying the life of those