UNDEE THE SNOW. 



When autumn days grew pale, there came a troop 

 Of childlike forms from that cold mountain top ; 

 With trailing garments through the air they came, 

 Or walk'd the ground with girded loins, and threw 

 Spangles of silvery frost upon the grass, 

 And edged the brook with glistening parapets, 

 And built it crystal bridges, touch'd the pool, 

 And turn'd its face to glass, or rising thence, 

 They shook, from their full laps, the soft, light snow, 

 And buried the great earth, as autumn winds 

 Bury the forest floor in heaps of leaves.— William Ci/llen Bryant. 



HE Snowflake, ar- 

 rested iu its descent 

 and transferred to 

 the microscope, is an 

 object of beauty, 

 and teeming with 

 matter for reflec- 

 tion. The land- 

 scape which the 

 traces during the night 

 delicate crystals on the 

 ■% window-pane is a mystery to 

 the child and a marvel to the 

 ],t J man. Here is exhibited 

 beauty in combination with 

 power. Great agents have 

 been "frost and fire" in the 

 physical revolutions of the 

 world. How they began, and 

 where they will end, let us 

 leave for speculators to dream, 

 and confine our business to 

 the world as it is. 

 After a night's downfall, as 

 far as the eye can scan, everywhere lies the snow. 

 It makes the leafless trees look elegant, hides the 

 smoke-dried city garden, and buries all evidence of 

 the scavenger's neglect. The town is as trim and 

 clean as a chimney-sweep in his Sunday shirt, and 

 the country one vast tablecloth to which birds 

 are the only guests. But under the snow lies, 

 fearful to contemplate, all the unpleasant experi- 

 ences of mud and slop. So " frost and fire " conduce 

 alternately to our pleasure and pain. 



The small experiences of snow which fall to our 

 lot are sufficient to remind us of the glaciers and 

 avalanches of mountainous districts. "The snow 

 which during the whole year falls upon the moun- 

 tains does not melt, but maintains its solid state, 

 No. 14. 



where their elevations exceed the height of 9,000 feet 

 or thereabouts. Where these snows accumulate to 

 great thickness, in the valleys, or in the deep mazy 

 fractures of the soil, they harden under the 

 influence of pressure resulting from their incum- 

 bent weight. But it always happens that a certain 

 quantity of water, the result of momentary fusion of 

 the superficial beds, traverses its substance, and this 

 forms a crystalline mass of ice, granidated in struc- 

 ture, which the Swiss naturalists designate neve. 

 From the successive melting and freezing, provoked 

 by the heat by day and the cold by night, the infil- 

 tration of air and water in its interstices, the neve is 

 slowly transformed into a homogeneous and sky- 

 coloured block of ice, filled with an infinity of air 

 bubbles ; this is what is called glace bulleuse, bubbled 

 ice. Finally, these masses are completely frozen ; 

 the water replaces the air bubbles ; then the trans- 

 formation is complete ; the ice is homogeneous, and 

 presents those fine azure tints so much admired by 

 the tourist who traverses the masnificent glaciers 

 of Switzerland and Savoy. 53 



Such are the glaciers which fill the gorges of the 

 Alps, and by a gradual progress move onwards to the 

 valleys, where they continually melt, whilst at their 

 sources they are being as continually replenished. 

 Such the means by which great and important 

 changes have been wrought on the surface of the 

 globe, and such the material for many a castle in 

 the air more fragile and evanescent than snow. 

 The parallel roads of Glen Roy indicate the action 

 of the glaciers of Scotland in ancient times, and 

 other evidences may be traced amongst the moun- 

 tains of Wales. 



At one time a notion prevailed iu the vicinity of 

 snow-capped mountains that an avalanche might be 

 brought down by the firing of a gun or the tinkling 

 of a bell ; that a trifling sound might cause a small 

 fragment of snow to move, and in its motion down- 



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