When the active curiosity of man is engaged in interrogating Nature, or when his imagination dwells on the wide fields of organic creation, among the multifarious impressions which his mind receives, perhaps none is so strong and profound as that of the universal profusion with which life is everywhere distributed. Even on the polar ice the air resounds with the cries or songs of birds, and with the hum of insects. Nor is it only the lower dense and vaporous strata of the atmosphere which are thus filled with life, but also the higher and more ethereal regions.
Whenever Mont Blanc or the summits of the Cordilleras have been ascended, living creatures have been found there. On the Chimborazo, eight thousand feet higher than Etna, we found butterflies and other winged insects, borne by ascending currents of air to those almost unapproachable solitudes, which man, led by a restless curiosity or unappeasable thirst of knowledge, treads with adventurous but cautious steps: like him strangers in those elevated regions, their presence shows us that the more flexible organization of animal creation can subsist far beyond the limits at which vegetation ceases. The condor, the giant of the Vulture tribe, often soared over our heads above all the summits of the Andes, at an altitude higher than would be the Peak of Teneriffe if piled on the snow-covered crests of the Pyrenees.
The rapacity of this powerful bird attracts him to these regions, whence his far-seeing eye may discern the objects of his pursuit, the softwood Vicunas, which, wandering in herds, frequent, like the Chamois, the mountain pastures adjacent to the regions of perpetual snow.
