The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1897-10-27

BMkMN.sE which push their
EsSFsS heads boldly
through the ice and form a border OF
blue blossoms on the edge of the snow
sheet.
This adventurous little plant does not
wait for the melting of the snow, but,
vastly daring, begins to grow under the
surface of the ice shetland melts a way
up for itself by internal heat, ike
vegetable furnace. It may fairly be
called a slow combustion stove, not fig-
uratively. but literally 1t burns itself
up in order to melt the ice above II.
This wonderful plant opens its fringed
and pensile blue blossoms in the very
midst of the snow. often showing its
slender head above a thin layer OF Ice
where it fearlessly displays its two SIS
ter bells among the frozen sheet whlch
still surrounds it's stem in the most in
creditable fashion.
Comparatively few observers have
noticed that the soldanella, fragile as
1t Is, actually forces itself up through
solid coat of ice, not exactly by hewlng
its way, but by melting path for it.
self in the crystal sheet above 1t. Yet
such is really the case. warns the ice as
1t goes. The bud begins to grow on the
frozen soil before the ground Is bare
under the hardened and compressed
snow which at its edge is always ice
like in texture They then bore their
way up by internal heat tlike that OF
an animaD through the sheet that COW
ers them: and they often expand their
delicate blue or white blossoms. with
the scalloped edges, in sup-shaped
hollow above while a sheet of re-frozen
ice, through which they have warmed
a tunnel or canal for themselves, still
surrounds their stems and hides their
roots and their hattened foliage. This
Is so strange a miracle of nature that
it demands some explanations; the
method by which the soldanella obtains
its results is no less marvellous than
the results themselves which it pro-
duCes
The canny plant lays its plans deep,
and begins we'll beforehand. it has
made preparations. All the previous
summer il has been spreading it's round
leaves to the mountain sun, and laying
by Material for next years Towering
season. Leaves are the mouths and
stomachs of plants, and the soldanella
has style of leaves admirably adapted
to it's peculiar purposes Expanded in
the sunlight, they eat carbon and by
drogen all summer, and by the time
winter comes they are thick and leath-
f,io1 70 tho cnrinO and
of course, evergreen. The material
thus laid by consists of starch, proto-
pIasm, and other rich foodstuffs. All
winter the plant is hidden under the
snow and ice, but as soon as the spring
sun begins to melt the surface at the
lower edge of the sheets water trickles
down through cracks in the ice, and
sets the root-stock budding. 1t produces
the very same effect as the water that
is poured upon melting barley in order
to make it terminate. And the same
result follows. The soldanella absOrbs
oxygen from the air below the snow,
evolves heat from their combination.
and combines with it the fuels in its
own substance, through the icy sheets
that spread above it,
The warmth the plant obtains by
this curious process of slow internal
combustion it first employs to melt
little round hole in the ice for it's
arched fower-buds At the beginning
the hollow which is found above each
pair of buds is dome shaped; the stem
pushes its way up through a dome of
air inclosed in the ice; and the water
it liberates trickles down to the root,
thus helping to supply moisture for
further growth with its consequent
heating. But by-and-by the stem
lengthens, and the bud is raised to
considerable height by its continuous
growth. Still, so slight is the total
quantity of heat the poor little plant
can evolve with all its efforts that by
the time the stem is an inch or two
long, the lower part of the tunnel has
curiOusly frozen again. In this stage,
then, the melted space is no longer
dome; is assumes the form of little
balloon OF round bubble of air. sur
rounding the flower-bud, At the same
time, the ice beneath, having frozen
again. almost touches the STEM so that
the bud seems to occupy a small, clear
area of its own in the midst of the
sheet, with ice above, tSow, and all
round it.
Gradually in this way, the little buds.
manage to bore their way to the sur