The Alps are the most famous of all the homes of the glaciers, not only because of the great number of the glaciers and the beauty of the scenery, but because it was in the Alps that Agassiz, living in a little stone hut among the mountains, studied the glaciers and their ways and proved that it was these strange creatures of snow and ice that had come down during the Ice Age and worked such marvellous changes on the face of the earth. In the Alps, just as Muir found them doing among the glaciers of Alaska, the flowers bloom at the very edge of the snow line. And they come on much more rapidly than they do in temperate climates. As fast as the snow melts back blossoms just cover the meadows thick with the deepest, richest colors—blue, red, white, yellow, purple, and every shade of these. Some of these flowers are as pure white as the snows. The queen of beauty among them all, many think, is the Alpine rose. In that pure, clear air its color seems actually to glow like the famous peak, the Jungfrau, at sunrise.
LOUIS AGASSIZ
The great teacher who discovered the Ice Age.
One little flower is in such a hurry, so afraid it will miss the first May party, that it blooms under the ice and melts its own way right up through. Then it calls to the bees and the butterflies, in the way that flowers have:
"Good morning! It's spring, and here I am again and how do you do? Come and kiss me!"
The soldanella grows among the thick pebble beds and the big boulders right on the edges of the glaciers. It is a member of the primrose family. It may be pink, white, or blue. The blue flowers are most common. But blue, pink, or white, these baby bells are always born twins; two sisters side by side on the same stalk, showing their dear fairy faces just above those layers of ice. They are such delicate little things you wonder how they can ever stand it. But ice, pshaw, they don't mind it at all.
BLUSHING A WAY THROUGH THE ICE
If you are a bashful boy or girl you can understand how the Misses Soldanella have been able, in spite of their icy covering, to get here to greet us on this lovely May morning. You know how warm your face feels when you blush. It seems to be somewhat the same way with all flowers when they blush into bloom. The blossom becomes quite a little warmer than any other part of the plant. It is the heat of the growing buds and, still more, the heat of the blossoms that melts a passage for the Soldanellas through the ice, for they often blossom before they get above the ice at all.
The higher we climb the brighter the flowers, and they grow in thicker masses, and each kind spreads out into larger fields than they did where we came from down below—great belts of blue gentians, whole fields of golden yellow globe flowers. You'd hardly expect this, would you? And you'll be still more surprised at the reason. Did you notice, as shown in their pictures, that the Soldanellas have only the bees for their callers? Just look if you can see any bees where we are now. Not a bee. But butterflies everywhere. And that's the answer. The flowers of the upper meadows are brighter, grow thicker and spread wider—all on account of the butterflies; to get the butterfly "trade."