Excerpt from Alpine Flowers for English Gardens Alpine plants fringe the vast fields of snow and ice of the high hills, and at great elevations have often scarcely time to flower and ripen a few seeds before they are again im bedded; while sometimes, if the' previous year's snow has been very heavy, and the present year's sun is weak, numbers of them may remain beneath the surface for more than a year. Enormous areas of ground, inhabited by alpine plants, are every year covered by a deep -bed of snow. Where the tall tree or shrub cannot exist from the intense cold, at deep soft mass of downy snow settles upon these minute plants, like a great cloud-borne quilt, under which 'they rest un tortured by the alternation of frost and biting wind with moist, balmy, and spring-like days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.