The bluebird comes, and with his warble drills the ice, and sets free the rivers and ponds 

 and frozen ground. As the sand flows down the slopes a little way, assuming the forms of 

 foliage when the frost comes out of the ground, so this little rill of melody flows a short way 

 down' the concave of the sky. -Henry David Thoreau. 



The Guide tto Nature. 



EDUCATION AND RECREATION JPI 



Study and Photography of Snow Crystals 



BY WILSON A. BENTLEY, JERICHO, VT. 



HAD a natural (inherited) 

 love for nature and for 

 prying into nature's se- 

 crets, which manifested it- 

 self at a very early age. I 

 took delight in my early 

 "teens" in observing and 

 studying clouds, minerals, hoar frost 

 and other natural objects, but most of 

 all the snow crystals from cloudland. 

 There was something about them that 

 attracted me. They appealed to me 

 not only because of their beauty of 

 form but because they came from that 

 mysterious and then but little known 

 cloudland above. So much mystery 

 enshrouded their place of origin and 

 manner of growth that T wanted to 

 learn somewhat about them. Here was 

 a realm of nature awaiting investiga- 

 tion and sure to reward the prospector. 

 For some years I took delight in ob- 

 serving them under a microscope and 

 in making; hundreds of 



drawings 



which, as 1 afterward learned, utterly 

 failed to represent them correctly. 



The thought occurred frequently, 

 "Oh ! if there were only some way to 

 photograph them so that others might 

 see and enjoy their loveliness, even as 

 T do when viewing them under the 

 microscope." 



The popularization of dry plate 

 photography seemed to offer me my 

 chance. In the autumn of 1884. I pur- 

 chased a Bausch & Lomb microscope 

 with one-half inch objective and an 

 extension camera and by uniting them 

 made what is called a photo-micro- 

 scopic camera. In this apparatus, the 

 microscope objective takes the place 

 of the ordinary camera lens and makes 

 a greatly enlarged image of an object 

 for photographic purposes. 



With what hopes and fears I made 

 my first attempt, using window frost 

 for my subject and artificial (oil) light 

 for illumination ! 



Copyright igog by The Agassiz Association. Stamford. Conn. 



