SNOWY RANGE FLORA. 159 
clumps of grass, its blades rarely an inch in 
length, and patches of a kind of mossy plant, 
bearing tiny, fragrant blue or white blossoms, 
which open as soon as they are comfortably out 
of the ground. 
For reasons belonging to the province of 
Physical Geography, we have no glaciers, and 
the perpetual snows of our lofty mountains are 
j gathered into vast fields or banks, in places where 
the rocks or the contour of the ground protects 
them from the warm west winds. From their 
sun-eaten edges rills of the purest water leap down 
to lakes or ponds, which are their children, and 
which the besieging summer has only parted 
from their icy embrace for a few brief weeks. 
Where they extend down some valley below 
timber-line, as they often do, one can date each 
rod of ground the heat has won from them, by 
the age of the vegetation that has sprung up on 
it. Grasses of the deepest, tenderest green, and 
flowers of the most exquisite hues grow almost 
up to their very edges. 
In the immediate vicinity of one of these vast 
snow-banks, I one August day gathered twenty- 
four varieties of plants and flowers. Among 
them were fragrant shooting-stars, graceful blue 
harebells, large columbines in the daintiest shades 
of purple and white, and many flowers peculiar 
to the Rocky Mountains, but which ceased to 
