TOUCHES OF NATURE 57 
fartner on it will be as hard as a rock. A little 
covering of dry grass or leaves is a great protection. 
The moist places hold out long and the spring runs 
never freeze. You find the frost has gone several 
inches into the plowed ground, but on going to the 
woods, and poking away the leaves and débris under 
the hemlocks and cedars, you find there is no frost 
at all. The Earth freezes her ears and toes and 
naked places first, and her body last. 
If heat were visible, or if we represent it say by 
smoke, then the December landscape would present 
acurious spectacle. We should see the smoke lying 
low over the meadows, thickest in the hollows and 
moist places, and where the turf was oldest and 
densest. It would cling to the fences and ravines. 
Under every evergreen tree we should see the vapor 
rising and filling the branches, while the woods of 
pine and hemlock would be blue with it long after 
it had disappeared from the open country. It 
would rise from the tops of the trees, and be carried 
this way and that with the wind. The valleys of 
the great rivers, like the Hudson, would overflow 
with it. Large bodies of water become regular mag- 
azines in which heat is stored during the summer, 
and they give it out again during the fall and early 
winter. The early frosts keep well back from the 
Hudson, skulking behind the ridges, and hardly 
come over in sight at any point. But they grow 
bold as the season advances, till the river’s fires, too, 
are put out and Winter covers it with his snows. 
