These wretched little dwarfs seem, however, to have pretty long lives, and, as we have said, deck themselves in the most gaudy colours every summer.
In the Alps of Switzerland and other temperate countries, the flowering season is also a very short one and soon over. It is often not more than six weeks, yet in that short time the rich blue of the Gentian, the Alpine Roses, Soldanellas, Campanulas, and many others make some of these grass slopes high up in the mountains a perfect garden of loveliness.
Sometimes in passing over the snowfields of Switzerland just before spring, one notices the pretty violet flowers of the Soldanella swaying to and fro in the wind above the unmelted snow. One does occasionally see in this country the Snowdrop in the midst of snow, but then it has fallen after the Snowdrop had blossomed.
The Alpine Soldanella flowers whilst the earth is still covered. It begins as soon as the ground below the snow is thawed. Each little developing flower-stalk melts out a grotto in the snow above itself, and so bores, thawing its way up into the air above. It has already been mentioned that, inside a flower, the temperature is often higher than the surrounding air. It is this higher temperature of the flower which thaws a little dome or grotto in the snow above the head of the flower.[44] When a flock of sheep are covered by a snowdrift, a similar hollow is formed above them by their breath and the high temperature of their bodies: they often seem indeed to be little or none the worse for being buried. The Soldanella melts its way in just the same manner.
In this country we have no such magnificent chain of mountains as the Alps, and yet we find on the Scotch and Welsh mountains quite a number of real alpines.
There are, for instance, such flowers as Sea-pink (Armeria), Sea Plantain (Plantago maritima), Scurvy-grass, and others, which can be found on windy, desolate gullies and corries high up on the Highland hills, and which also occur on the sea-coast, but never between the seashore and the tops of the mountains. You might search every field, every moor, and every riverside throughout the country, but you would not discover those three plants anywhere between the seashore and the summits.
At first sight it seems quite impossible to explain why this should be the case. But all those three plants are found in the Arctic regions, and the explanation is in reality quite simple.
At one time the shores of England and Scotland formed part of the Arctic regions. Ice and snow covered the hills and mountains; huge glaciers occupied the valleys and flowed over the lowlands, plastering the low grounds with clay which they dragged underneath them, and polishing and scratching any exposed rocks.
When the ice began to melt away and left free "berg battered beaches" and "boulder-hatched hills," Lincolnshire and Yorkshire must have been like the Antarctic regions in those days. This is how Dr. Louis Bernacchi describes the Antarctic continent:—
"The scene before us looked inexpressibly desolate.... No token of vitality anywhere, nothing to be seen on the steep slopes of the mountains but rock and ice.... Gravel and pebbles were heaped up in mounds and ridges. In some places these ridges coalesced so as to form basin-shaped hollows. Bleached remains of thousands of penguins were scattered all over the platform, mostly young birds that had succumbed to the severity of the climate."