There are valleys in the Alps far above six thousand feet which have no glaciers, and where perpetual snow is seen only on their northern sides. These contrasts in the temperature lead to the most wonderful contrasts in the aspect of the soil; summer and winter lie side by side, and bright flowers look out from the edge of snows that never melt. Where the warm winds prevail there may be sheltered spots at a height of ten or eleven thousand feet, isolated nooks opening southward where the most exquisite flowers bloom in the midst of perpetual snow and ice; and occasionally I have seen a bright little flower with a cap of snow over it that seems to be its shelter. The flowers give, indeed, a most peculiar charm to these high Alpine regions. Occurring often in beds of the same kind, forming green, blue, or yellow patches, they seem nestled close together in sheltered spots, or even in fissures and chasms of the rock, where they gather in dense quantities. Even in the sternest scenery of the Alps some sign of vegetation lingers; and I remember to have found a tuft of lichen growing on the only rock which pierced through the ice on the summit of the Jungfrau. It was a species then unknown to botanists, since described under the name of Umbelicarus Higinis. The absolute solitude, the intense stillness of the upper Alps is most impressive; no cattle, no pasturage, no bird, nor any sound of life--and, indeed, even if there were, the rarity of the air in these high regions is such that sound is hardly transmissible. The deep repose, the purity of aspect of every object, the snow, broken only by ridges of angular rocks, produce an effect no less beautiful than solemn. Sometimes, in the midst of the wide expanse, one comes upon a patch of the so-called red snow of the Alps. At a distance one would say that such a spot marked some terrible scene of blood, but as you come nearer the hues are so tender and delicate, as they fade from deep red to rose, and so die into the pure colorless snow around, that the first impression is completely dispelled. This red snow is an organic growth, a plant springing up in such abundance that it colors extensive surfaces, just as the microscopic plants dye our pools with green in the spring. It is an Alga (Protocoites nivalis), well known in the Arctics, where it forms wide fields in the summer.