k buttercup, 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 grass of Parnassus 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 cushion-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
cushion-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 accumulated
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