Transcription:
2 character may be positively known. Glaciers retired slowly steadily from the foot of the range to their present shadowy
hidings in the summits, where they are now dying one by one. These glaciers seem to have been followed by a illegible of arctic
plants of varying width from first to last At least they are now so followed. Because Arctic plants now exist in bogs of some
portion of the Alps, they are supposed to be the remnants of a once generally diffused Cold flora . I doubt the truth of this
hypothesis, but will offer no opinion but I am very sure that no Arctic flora ever was generally diffused over the western
slope of this portion of the Sierra Nevada since the formation of glaciers. The different members of this flora followed their
food-procuring glaciers just as young chickens follow the scratchings cluckings of a mother hen, they ascended the mtns with
a breadth of numbers measured by the breadth of climate bearable by them by the kind quantity of their food - heat dro illegible
behind -, ice uneatable rocks before. They are now about as broadly diffused as they ever were. The glacial year of this mtn'
slope with its plants seasons, may be compared with its common year of twelve months. In spring the snowline creeping upward