One may at first sight compare them with the carefully tended lawns of pleasure-grounds; for they are as free from weeds as they, and as smooth, but here the likeness ends; for these wild lawns, with all their exquisite fineness, have no trace of that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground lawns are apt to have even when viewed at a distance.

And, not to mention the flowers with which they are brightened, their grasses are very much finer both in color and texture, and instead of lying flat and motionless, matted together like a dead green cloth, they respond to the touches of every breeze, rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and fruiting in the vital light.
Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions of the Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes.

Probably from 2500 to 3000 exist between latitude 36 deg.

30' and 39 deg., distributed, of course, like the lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial features of the landscape.
On the head waters of the rivers there are what are called "Big Meadows," usually about from five to ten miles long.

These occupy the basins of the ancient ice-seas, where many tributary glaciers came together to form the grand trunks.