There must be few people who have neither seen nor heard of the beauty and exquisite colours of Alpine[15] flowers. They are first seen on the fringes of the stately woods above the cultivated land; then in multitudes on the sloping pastures with which many mountain-chains are robed, brightening the verdure with innumerable colours; and higher up, where neither grass nor loose herbage can exist, among the slopes of shattered fragments which roll down from the mountain-tops,--nay, even amidst the glaciers,--they gladden the eye of the traveller and seem to plead sweetly with the spirits of destruction. Alpine plants fringe the vast hills of snow and ice of the high hills, and sometimes have scarcely time to flower and ripen a few seeds before being again covered by their snowy bed. When the season is unfavourable, numbers of them remain under the snow for more than a year; and here they safely rest, unharmed by the alternations of frost and biting winds, with moist and springlike days. They possess the great charm of endless variety of form and colour, and represent widely separated divisions of the vegetable kingdom; but they are all small and low-growing compared to their relatives grown in the plains, where the soil is richer and the climate milder. Among them are tiny orchids quite as interesting in their way as those from the tropics; liliputian trees, and a tree-like moss (_Lycopodium dendroideum_) branching into an erect little pyramid as if in imitation of a mountain pine; ferns that peep cautiously from narrow rocky crevices as if clinging to the rock for shelter from the cold blasts; bulbous plants, from lilies to bluebells; evergreen shrubs, perfect in leaf and blossom and fruit, yet so small that one's hat will cover them; exquisite creeping plants spreading freely along the ground, and when they creep over the brows of rocks or stones, draping them with curtains of colour as lovely as those we see in the forests; numberless minute plants scarcely larger than mosses, mantling the earth with fresh green carpets in the midst of winter; succulent plants in endless variety; and lastly the ferns, mosses, and lichens which are such an endless source of pleasure and delight to the traveller. In short, Alpine vegetation presents us with nearly every type of plant life of northern and temperate climes, chastened in tone and diminished in size. [15] The word "Alpine" is used in a general sense to denote the vegetation that grows naturally on the most elevated regions of the earth; that is, on all high mountains, whether they rise up in hot tropical plains or in cooler northern pastures.