More Science From an Easy Chair Part 1

More Science From an Easy Chair.

by Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester.

PREFACE

The present volume is a reprint of that issued in 1912 with the t.i.tle, "Science from an Easy Chair: Second Series." It consists, like its predecessors, of chapters originally published by me in the _Daily Telegraph_, which I have revised and ill.u.s.trated by a large number of drawings. In order to render the issue of the present cheap edition possible, it has been found necessary to restrict its size a little by the omission of chapters dealing with Glaciers, Ferns and Fern-seed, and the history of the Sea-squirts or Ascidians, which are contained in the original larger book. My hope is that this collection of papers, "about a number of things," may meet with as kind a reception from my readers as that which they have accorded to its predecessors.

E. RAY LANKESTER

_July 1, 1920_

MORE SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR

CHAPTER I

A DAY IN THE OBERLAND

I am writing in early September from Interlaken, one of the loveliest spots in Europe when blessed with a full blaze of sunlight and only a few high-floating clouds, but absolutely detestable in dull, rainy weather, losing its beauty as the fairy scenes of a theatre do when viewed by dreary daylight. It is the case of the little girl of whom it is recorded that "When she was good she was very good, and when she was not she was horrid." This morning, after four days' misconduct, Interlaken was very good. The tremendous sun-blaze seemed to fill the valleys with a pale blue luminous vapour, cut sharply by the shadows of steep hill-sides. Here and there the smoke of some burning weeds showed up as brightest blue. Far away through the gap formed in the long range of nearer mountains, where the Lutschine Valley opens into the vale of Interlaken, the Jungfrau appeared in full majesty, absolutely brilliant and unearthly. So I walked towards her up the valley. Zweilutschinen is the name given to the spot where the valley divides into two, that to the left leading up to Grindelwald, under the shadow of the Monch and the Wetterhorn, that to the right bringing one to Lauterbrunnen and the Staubbach waterfall, with the snow-fields of the Tchingel finally closing the way--over which I climbed years ago to Ried in the Loetschen Thal.

The autumn crocus was already up in many of the closely trimmed little meadows, whilst the sweet scent of the late hay-crop spread from the newly cut herbage of others.

At Zweilutschinen, where the white glacier-torrent unites with the black, and the milky stream is nearly as cold as ice, and is boiling along over huge rocks, its banks bordered with pine forest, I came upon a native fis.h.i.+ng for trout. He was using a short rod and a weighted line with a small "grub" as bait. He dropped his line into the water close to the steep bank, where some projecting rock or half-sunk boulder staved off the violence of the stream. He had already caught half-a-dozen beautiful, red-spotted fish, which he carried in a wooden tank full of water, with a close-fitting lid to prevent their jumping out. I saw him take a seventh. The largest must have weighed nearly two pounds. It seems almost incredible that fish should inhabit water so cold, so opaque, and so torrential, and should find there any kind of nourishment. They make their way up by keeping close to the bank, and are able, even in that milky current, to perceive and s.n.a.t.c.h the unfortunate worm or grub which has been washed into the flood and is being hurried along at headlong speed. Only the trout has the courage, strength, and love of nearly freezing water necessary for such a life--no other fish ventures into such conditions. Trout are actually caught in some mountain pools at a height of 8,000 ft., edged by perpetual snow.

You are rarely given trout to eat here in the hotels. A lake fish, called "ferras," a large species of the salmonid genus _Coregonus_, to which the skelly, powan, and vendayce of British lakes belong, is the commonest fish of the _table d'hote_, and not very good. A better one is the perch-pike or zander. It is common in all the larger shallow lakes of Central Europe, and abounds in the "broads" which extend from Potsdam to Hamburg, though it is unknown in the British Isles. It is quite the best of the European fresh-water fish for the table, and there should be no difficulty about introducing it into the Norfolk Broads. It would be worth an effort on the part of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries to do so, as the perch-pike, unlike other fresh-water fishes, would hold its own on the market against haddock, brill, and plaice. Another interesting fresh-water fish which grows to a large size in the Lake of Geneva (where I have seen it netted) is the burbot--called "lote" in French--a true cod of fresh-water habit which, though common throughout Europe and Northern Asia, is, in our country, only taken in a few rivers opening on the east coast. It is a brilliantly coloured fish, orange-brown, mottled with black, and is very good eating.

Pa.s.sing up the Lauterbrunnen valley, I came upon some wild raspberries and quant.i.ties of the fine, large-flowered sage, _Salvia glutinosa_, with its yellow flowers, in shape like those of the dead-nettle, but much bigger. They were being visited by humble-bees, and I was able to see the effective mechanism at work by which the bee's body is dusted with the pollen of the flower. I have ill.u.s.trated this in some drawings (Fig. 1) which are accompanied by a detailed explanation. Two long stamens, _a1_, arch high up over the lip of the flower, _li_, on which the bee alights, and are protected by a keel or hood of the corolla. Each stamen is provided with a broad process, _a2_, standing out low down on its arched stalk, and blocking the way to the nectar in the cup of the flower. When the bee pushes his head against these obstacles and forces them backwards, the result is to swing the long arched stalk, with its pollen sacks, in the opposite direction, namely, forwards and downwards on to the bee's back. It was easy to see this movement going on, and the consequent dusting of the bee's back with pollen. In somewhat older flowers, which have been relieved of their pollen, the style, _st._, or free stalk-like extremity of the egg-holding capsule, already as long as the stamens, grows longer and bends down towards the lip or landing-place of the yellow flower. When a pollen-dusted bee alights on one of these maturer flowers the sticky end of the now depending style is gently rubbed by the bee's back and smeared with a few pollen-grains brought by the bee from a distant flower. These rapidly expand into "pollen tubes," or filaments, and, penetrating the long style, reach the egg-germs below. Thus cross-fertilization is brought about by the bees which come for the nectar of _Salvia_. The stalks and outer parts of the flower of this plant produce a very sticky secretion which effectually prevents any small insects from crawling up and helping themselves to the nectar exclusively provided for the attraction of the humble-bee, whose services are indispensable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1.--Diagrams of the flower of the yellow sage (_Salvia glutinosa_) a little larger than life. 1. An entire flower seen from the side. _st._ The stigma, _a2_. The pair of modified half-anthers which are pushed back by the bee when inserting its head into the narrow part of the flower. 2. A similar flower at a later stage when the stigma, _st._, has grown downwards so as to touch the back of a bee alighting on the lip of the flower, and gather pollen from it. 3. Diagram of one of the two stamens. _f._ The stalk or filament of the stamen. _a1_. The pollen-producing half-anther, _eo._ The elongated connective joining it to the sterile half-anther. 4.

Section through a flower showing _ov._ the ovary; _nec._ the nectary or honey-glands; _st._ the style; _li._ the lip of the flower on which the bee alights. 5. Similar section showing the effect of the pus.h.i.+ng back of _a2_ by the bee, and the downward swinging of the polliniferous half-anther so as to dust the bee's back with pollen.

The dotted arrow shows the direction of the push given by the bee.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.--The Edelweiss, _Gnaphalium leontopodium_.]

As I walked on, a belated Apollo b.u.t.terfly, with its two red spots, and a pale Swallow-tail fluttered by me. Then some children emerged from unsuspected lurking-places in the wood and offered bunches of edelweiss (Fig. 2). This curious-looking little plant does not grow (as pretended by reporters of mountaineering disasters) exclusively in places only to be reached by a dangerous climb. I have gathered it in meadows on the hillside above Zermatt, and it is common enough in accessible spots. The flowers are like those of our English groundsel and yellow in colour--little "composite" k.n.o.bs, each built up of many tubular "florets" packed side by side. Six or seven of these little short-stalked k.n.o.bs of florets are arranged in a circlet around a somewhat larger k.n.o.b, and each of them gives off from its stalk one long and two shorter white, hairy, leaf-like growths, flat and blade-like in shape and spreading outwards from the circle, so that the whole series resemble the rays of a star (or more truly of a star-fis.h.!.+). They look strangely artificial, as though cut out of new white flannel (with a greenish tint), and have been dignified by the comparison of the shape of the white-flannel rays with that of the foot of the lion and the claws of the eagle. They are extraordinary-looking little plants, and are similar in their hairiness and pale tint to some of the seaside plants on our own coast, which, in fact, include species closely allied to them ("cud-weeds" of the genus _Gnaphalium_).

The huge cliffs of rocks on either side (in some parts over a thousand feet in sheer height from the torrent) come closer to one another in the part where we now are than in most Alpine valleys, so as almost to give it the character of a "gorge." At some points the highest part of the precipice actually overhangs the perpendicular face by many feet.

A refres.h.i.+ng cold air comes up from the icy torrent, whilst the heat of the sun diffuses the delicious resinous scent of the pine trees.

Above the naked rock we see steep hill-sides covered with forest, and away above these again bare gra.s.s-slopes topped by cloud. But as the clouds slowly lift and break we become suddenly aware of something impending far above and beyond all this, something more dazzling in its white brightness than the sun-lit clouds, a form sharply cut in outline and firm, yet rounded by a shadow of an exquisite purple tint which no cloud can a.s.sume. The steely blue Alpine sky fits around this marvel of pure whiteness as it towers through the opening cloud, and soars out of earth's range. What is this glory so remote yet impending over us? It is the Jungfrau, the incomparable virgin of the ice-world, who bares her snowy breast. She slowly parts her filmy veil, and, as we gaze, uncovers all her loveliness.

The rock walls of the Lauterbrunnen valley show at one place a thickness of many hundred feet of strongly marked, perfectly horizontal "strata"--the layers deposited immense ages ago at the bottom of a deep sea. Not only have they been raised to this position, and then cut into, so as to make the profound furrow or valley in the sides of which we see them, but they have been bent and contorted in places to an extent which is, at first sight, incredible. Close to one great precipice of orderly horizontal layers you see the whole series suddenly turned up at right angles, and the same strata which were horizontal have become perpendicular. But that is not the limit, for the upturned strata are seen actually to turn right over, and again become horizontal in a reversed order, the strata which were the lowest becoming highest, and the highest lowest. The rock is rolled up just as a flat disc of Genoese pastry--consisting of alternate layers of jam and sponge-cake--is folded on itself to form a double thickness. The forces at work capable of treating the solid rocks, the foundations of the great mountains, in this way are gigantic beyond measurement. This folding of the earth's crust is caused by the fact that the "crust," or skin of the earth, has ceased to cool, being warmed by the sun, and therefore does not shrink, whilst the great white-hot ma.s.s within (in comparison with which the twenty-mile-thick crust is a mere film) continually loses heat, and shrinks definitely in volume as its temperature sinks. The crust or jacket of stratified rock deposited by the action of the waters on the surface of the globe has been compelled--at whatever cost, so to speak--to fit itself to the diminis.h.i.+ng "core" on which it lies. Slowly, but steadily, this "settlement" has gone on, and is going on. The horizontal rock layers, being now too great in length and breadth, adjust themselves by "buckling"--just as a too large, ill-fitting dress does--and the Alps, the Himalayas, and other great mountain ranges, are regions where this "buckling" process has for countless ages proceeded, slowly but surely. Probably the "buckling" has proceeded to a large extent without sudden movement, but with a lateral pressure of such power as ultimately to throw a crust of thousands of feet thickness into deep folds a mile or so in vertical measurement from crest to hollow, protruding from the general level both upwards and downwards, whilst often the folds are rolled over on to each other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.--Diagrams to show the "folding" of rock strata.

A. Normal horizontal position of the strata, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_; _xy_, horizontal line. B. Folding due to a shortening of the horizontal _xy_ by lateral pressure, acting in the direction of the arrow and due to shrinkage. C. More extreme case of folding, in which a raised ridge is made to fall over so as to bring the lowest layer _d_ above _a_, _b_ and _c_.]

This crumbling and folding has gone on at great depths--that is to say, some miles below the surface (a mere nothing compared with the 8,000 miles diameter of the globe itself), though we now see the results exposed, like the pastry folded by a cook. Immense time has been taken in the process. A folding movement involving a vertical rise of an inch in ten years would not be noticed by human onlookers, but in 600,000 years this would give you a vertical displacement of more than 5,000 ft. (nearly a mile!). It has been shown that in Switzerland, along a line of country extending from Basle to Milan, strata of 10,000 ft. to 20,000 ft. in thickness, which, if straightened out, would give a flat area of that thickness, and of 200 miles in length, have been buckled and folded so as to occupy only a length of 130 miles! The former tight-fitting skin of horizontal rock layers has "had to" buckle to that extent here (and in the same way in other mountain ranges in other parts of the world), because the whole terrestrial sphere has shrunk, owing to the gradual cooling of the ma.s.s, whilst the crust has not shrunk, not having lost heat.

Filled with interest and delight in these things, I reached the railway station at Lauterbrunnen, from whence the little train is driven far up the mountain, even into the very heart of the Jungfrau, by an electric current generated by a turbine, itself driven by the torrent at our feet, the waters of which have descended from the glaciers far above, to which it will carry us. In a few minutes I was gently gliding in the train up the to the "Wengern Alp" and the "Little Scheidegg"--a slope up which I have so often in former years painfully struggled on foot for four hours or more. One could to-day watch the whole scene, in ease and comfort, during the two hours'

ascent of the train. And a marvellous scene it is as one rises to the height of 8,000 ft., skirting the glaciers which ooze down the rocky sides of the Jungfrau, and mounting far above some of them. At the Scheidegg I changed into a smaller train, and with some thirty fellow-pa.s.sengers was carried higher and higher by the faithful, untiring electric current. After a quarter of an hour's progress we paused high above the "snout" of the great Eiger glacier, and descended by a short path on to it, examined the ice, its creva.s.ses and layers, and its "glacier-grains," and watched and heard an avalanche. The last time I was here it took a couple of hours to reach this spot from the Scheidegg, and probably neither I nor any of my fellow-pa.s.sengers could to-day endure the necessary fatigue of reaching this spot on foot. Then we remounted the train, and on we went into the solid rock of the huge Eiger. The train stops in the rock tunnel and we got out to look, through an opening cut in its side, down the sheer wall of the mountain on to the gra.s.sy meadows thousands of feet below.

Then we start again, and on we are driven by the current generated away down there in Lauterbrunnen, through the spiral tunnel, mounting a thousand feet more till we are landed at an opening cut on the further side of the rocky Eiger, which admits us to an actual footing on the great glacier called the Eismeer, or Icelake. We lunch at a restaurant cut out as a cavern in the solid rock, and survey the wondrous scene. We are now at a height of 10,000 feet, and in the real frozen ice-world, hitherto accessible only to the young and vigorous.

I have been there in my day with pain, danger, and labour, accompanied by guides and held up by ropes, but never till now with perfect ease and tranquillity and without "turning a hair," or causing either man or beast to labour painfully on my behalf. We had taken two hours only from Lauterbrunnen; in former days we should have started in the small hours of the morning from the Scheidegg, and have climbed through many dangers for some six or seven hours before reaching this spot.

I confess that I am not enchanted with all of the modern appliances for saving time and labour--the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, and the aeroplane. But these mountain railways fill me with satisfaction and grat.i.tude. When the Jungfrau railway was first projected, some athletic Englishmen with heavy boots and ice-axes, protested against the "desecration" of regions till then accessible only to them and to me, and others of our age and strength. They declared that the scenery would be injured by the railway and its troops of "tourists." As well might they protest against the desecration caused by the crawling of fifty house-flies on the dome of St. Paul's. These mountains and glaciers are so vast, and men with their railroads so small, that the latter are negligible in the presence of the former. No disfiguring effect whatever is produced by these mountain railways; the trains have even ceased to emit smoke since they were worked by electricity. I quite agree with those who object to "funiculars." The carriages on these are hauled up long, straight gashes in the mountain side, which have a hideous and disfiguring appearance. But I look forward with pleasure to the completion of the Jungfrau railway to the summit. I hope that the Swiss engineers will carry it through the mountain, and down along the side of the great Aletsch glacier to the Bel Alp and so to Brieg. That would be a glorious route to the Simplon tunnel and Italy!

I took three hours in the unwearied train descending from the Eismeer to Interlaken, and was back in my hotel in comfortable time for dinner, "mightily content with the day's journey," as Mr. Pepys would have said. I have always been sensitive to the action of diminished pressure, which produces what is called "mountain sickness" in many people. Many years ago I climbed by the glacier-pa.s.s known as the Weissthor from Macugnaga to the Riffel Alp, with a stylographic pen in my pocket. The reservoir of the pen contained a little air, which expanded as the atmospheric pressure diminished, and at 10,000 feet I found most of the ink emptied into my pocket. Probably one cause of the discomfort called "mountain sickness" arises from a similar expansion of gas contained in the digestive ca.n.a.l, and in the cavities connected with the ear and nose. The more suddenly the change of pressure is effected, the more noticeable is the discomfort. But I was rather pleased than otherwise to note, as I sat in the comfortable railway carriage, that when we pa.s.sed 8,000 feet in elevation the old familiar giddiness, and tendency to sigh and gasp, came upon me as of yore, as I gathered was the experience of some of my fellow-pa.s.sengers: and when we were returning, and had descended half-way to Lauterbrunnen, I enjoyed the sense of restored ease in breathing which I well remember when the whole experience was complicated by the fatigue of a long climb. A white-haired American lady was in the train with me ascending to the Eismeer. "I have longed all my life," she said, "to see a glaysher--to touch it and walk on it--and now I am going to do it at last. I and my daughter here have come right away from America to go on these cars to the glaysher."

When we were descending, I asked the old lady if she had been pleased.

"I can hardly speak of it rightly," she said. "It seems to me as though I have been standing up there on G.o.d's own throne." I do not sympathise with the Alpine monopolist who would grudge that dear old lady, and others like her, the little train and tramway by which alone such people can penetrate to those soul-stirring scenes. They are at least as sensitive to the beauty of the mountains as are the most muscular, most long-winded, and most sun-blistered of our friends--the acrobats of the rope and axe.

Interlaken _September, 1909_

CHAPTER II

SWITZERLAND IN EARLY SUMMER

It is the early summer of 1910 and I have but just returned from a visit to Switzerland. The latter part of June and the beginning of July is the best for a stay in that splendid and happy land if one is a naturalist, and cares for the beauty of Alpine meadows, and of the flowers which grow among and upon the rocks near the great glaciers.

This year the weather has, no doubt, been exceptionally cold and wet, and at no great height (5,000 feet) we have had snow-storms, even in July. But as compared with that of Paris and London the weather has been delightful. There has been an abundance of magnificent suns.h.i.+ne, and many days of full summer heat and cloudless sky. A fortnight ago (July 16th), and on the day before, it was as hot and brilliant in the valley of Chamonix as it can be. Mont Blanc and the Dome de Goutet stood out clear and immaculate against a purple-blue sky, and, as of old, we watched through the hotel telescope a party struggling, over the snow to the highest peak.

At Chillon the lake of Geneva, day after day, spread out to us its limitless surface of changing colour, now blending in one pearly expanse with the sky--so that the distant felucca boats seemed to float between heaven and earth--now streaked with emerald and amethystine bands. The huge mountain ma.s.ses rising with a vast sweep from St. Jingo's sh.o.r.e displayed range after range of bloom-like greys and purples, whilst far away and above delicately glittered--like some incredible vision of a heavenly world beyond the sun-lit sky itself--the apparition of the snows and rocks of the great Dents du Midi. All this I have left behind me, and have pa.s.sed back again to dull grey Paris, to the stormy Channel, and to the winter of London's July.

The incomparable pleasure which the lakes and valleys and mountains of Switzerland are capable of giving is due to the combination of many distinct sources of delight, each in itself of exceptional character.

A month ago, in bright suns.h.i.+ne, I went, once again, by the little electric railway (most blessed invention of our day) from the pine-shaded torrent below to the great Eiger rock-mountain, and through its heart to the glacier beyond, more than 10,000 feet above sea-level. On the way back I left the train at the foot of the Eiger glacier, and walked down with my companion amongst the rocks of the moraine and over the spa.r.s.e turf of these highest regions of life.

Everywhere was a profusion of gentians, the larger and darker, as well as the smaller, bluest of all blue flowers. The large, plump, yellow globe-flowers (_Trollius_), the sulphur-yellow anemone, the glacial white-and-pink b.u.t.tercup, the Alpine dryad, the Alpine forget-me-nots and pink primroses, the summer crocus, delicate hare-bells, and many other flowers of goodly size were abundant. The gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus and the edelweiss were not yet in flower, but lower down the slopes the Alpine rhododendron was showing its crimson bunches of blossom. It is a pity that the Swiss call this plant "Alpenrose," since there is a true and exquisite Alpine rose (which we often found) with deep red flowers, dark-coloured foliage, and a rich, sweet-briar perfume.

Lovely as these larger flowers of the higher Alps are, they are excelled in fascination by the delicate blue flowers of the Soldanellas, like little fringed foolscaps, by the brilliant little red and purple Alpine snap-dragon, and by the cus.h.i.+on-forming growths of saxifrages and other minute plants which encrust the rocks and bear, closely set in their compact, green, velvet-like foliage, tiny flowers as brilliant as gems. A ruby-red one amongst these is "the stalkless bladder-wort" (_Silene acaulis_), having no more resemblance at first sight to the somewhat ramshackle bladder-wort of our fields than a fairy has to a fishwife. There are many others of these cus.h.i.+on-forming, diminutive plants, with white, blue, yellow, and pink florets. Examined with a good pocket lens, they reveal unexpected beauties of detail--so graceful and harmonious that one wonders that no one has made carefully coloured pictures of them of ten times the size of nature, and published them for all the world to enjoy. Busily moving within their charmed circles we see, with our lens, minute insects which, attracted by the honey, are carrying the pollen of one flower to another, and effecting for these little pollen flowers what bees and moths do for the larger species.

Thus we are reminded that all this loveliness, this exquisite beauty, is the work of natural selection--the result of the survival of favourable variations in the struggle for existence. These minute symmetrical forms, this wax-like texture, these marvellous rows of coloured, enamel-like encrustation, have been selected from almost endless and limitless possible variations, and have been acc.u.mulated and maintained there as they are in all their beauty, by survival of the fittest--by natural selection. All beauty of living things, it seems, is due to Nature's selection, and not only all beauty of colour and form, but that beauty of behaviour and excellence of inner quality which we call "goodness." The fittest, that which has survived and will survive in the struggle of organic growth, is (we see it in these flowers) in man's estimation the beautiful. Is it possible to doubt that just as we approve and delightedly revel in the beauty created by "natural selection," so we give our admiration and reverence, without question, to "goodness," which also is the creation of Nature's great unfolding? Goodness (shall we say virtue and high quality?) is, like beauty, the inevitable product of the struggle of living things, and is Nature's favourite no less than man's desire. When we know the ways of Nature, we shall discover the source and meaning of beauty, whether of body or of mind.

As these thoughts are drifting through our enchanted dream we suddenly hear a deep and threatening roar from the mountain-side. We look up and see an avalanche falling down the rocks of the Jungfrau. The vast mountain, with its dazzling vestment of eternal snow, and its slowly creeping, green-fissured glaciers, towers above into the cloudless sky. In an instant the mind travels from the microscopic details of organic beauty, which but a moment ago held it entranced, to the contemplation of the gigantic and elemental force whose tremendous work is even now going on close to where we stand. The contrast, the range from the minute to the gigantic, is prodigious yet exhilarating, and strangely grateful. How many millions of years did it take to form those rocks (many of them are stratified, water-laid deposits) in the depths of the ocean? How many more to twist and bend them and raise them to their present height? And what inconceivably long persistence of the wear and tear of frost and snow and torrent has it required to excavate in their hard bosoms these deep, broad valleys thousands of feet below us, and to leave these strangely moulded mountain peaks still high above us? And that beauty of the sun-lit sky and of the billowy ice-field and of the colours of the lake below and of the luminous haze and the deep blue shade in the valley--how is that related to the beauty of the flowers? Truly enough, it is not a beauty called forth by natural selection. It is primordial; it is the beauty of great light itself. The response to its charm is felt by every living thing, even by the smallest green plant and the invisible animalcule, as it is by man himself. As I stand on the mountain-side we are all, from animalcule to man, sympathizing and uniting, as members of one great race, in our adoration of the sun. And in doing this we men are for the moment close to and in happy fellows.h.i.+p with our beautiful, though speechless, relatives who also live. Even the destructive bacteria which are killed by the sun probably enjoy an exquisite shudder in the process which more than compensates them for their extinction.

The pleasures of flower-seeking in Switzerland are by no means confined to the great heights. At moderate heights (4,000 to 5,000 feet) you have the Alpine meadows, and below those the rich-soiled woods which fill in the sides of the torrent-worn valleys. You cannot see an Alpine meadow after July, as it is cut down by then. It is at its best in June. It bears very little gra.s.s, and consists almost entirely of flowers. In places the hare-bells and Canterbury bells and the bugloss are so abundant as to make a whole valley-floor blue as in MacWhirter's picture. But more often the blue is intermixed with the b.a.l.l.s of, red clover and the spikes of a splendid pale pink polygonum (a sort of buckwheat) and of a very large and handsome plantain. Large yellow gentians, mulleins, the nearly black and the purple orchids, vetches of all colours, the Alpine clover with four or five enormous flowers in a head instead of fifty little ones, the Astrantias (like a circular brooch made up of fifty gems each mounted on a long elastic wire and set vibrating side by side), the sky-blue forget-me-nots, and the golden potentillas, are usually components of the Alpine meadow.

At Murren, and no doubt commonly elsewhere, there are a few very beautiful gra.s.ses among the flowers, but the most remarkable gra.s.s is one (_Poa alpina_), which has on every spikelet or head a bright green serpent-like streamer. Each of these "streamers" is, in fact, a young gra.s.s-plant, budded off "viviparously," as it is called, from the flower-head, or "spikelet," and having nothing to do with the proper fertilized seed or grain. The young plants so budded fall to the ground, and striking root rapidly, grow into separate individuals. It is probably owing to some condition in Alpine meadows adverse to the production of fertilized seed that this viviparous method of reproduction has been favoured, since it occurs also in an Alpine meadow-plant allied to the buckwheat, namely, _Polygonum viviparum_ (not the kind mentioned above), where the lower flowers are converted into little red bulbs, by which the plant propagates. Both the viviparous gra.s.s and the polygonum are found in England. In fact, a very large proportion of Alpine plants occur in parts of the British islands (a legacy from the glacial period), though many which are abundant in Switzerland are rare and local here.

At a lower level, in the woods, we come upon other plants, not really "Alpine" at all, but of great and special beauty. We found four kinds of winter-green (_Pirola_), one with a very large, solitary flower, white and wax-like, and the beautiful white b.u.t.terfly-orchid with nectaries three quarters of an inch long, and other large-flowered orchids. We were anxious to find the n.o.ble Martagon lily, and hunted in many glades and forest borders for it. At last, concealed on a bank in a wood, between Glion and Les Avants, it revealed itself in quant.i.ty, many specimens standing over three feet in height. Martagon is an Arabic word, signifying a Turkish cap. A very strange and uncanny-looking lily, which I had never seen before, turned up near Kandersteg at the Blue Lake, beloved of Mr. H. G. Wells. This is "the Herb Paris." It has four narrow outstretched green sepals, and four still narrower green petals, eight large stamens, and a purple seed capsule. Its broad oval leaves are also arranged in whorls of four.

Its name has nothing to do with the "ville lumiere," nor with the Trojan judge of female beauty, but refers to the symmetry and "parity"

of its component parts. I was not surprised to find that "the Herb Paris" is poisonous, and was anciently used in medicine. It looks weird and deadly.

Marmots, glacier fleas (spring-tails, not true fleas), admirable trout, and burbot (the fresh-water cod, called "lote" in French), outrageous wood-gnats, which English people call by a Portuguese name as soon as they are on the Continent, and singing birds (usually one is too late in the season to hear them) were our zoological accompaniment. There were singularly few b.u.t.terflies or other insects, probably in consequence of the previous wet weather.

_July, 1909_