92 A SPRING HERESY 



to knit up those spiny points and undulate opulently 

 like fur of frost about his leaf. But by the rule and 

 mystery of the craft, the points must first be served, 

 ere crystals might cluster on the intervening loops. 

 For the spine-tips are like frost-magnets, and until 

 satisfied deflect that fine stuff-of-crystals that might 

 have strayed to the near edges of the leaf. Even 

 so, the spines themselves have been starved, and 

 the meagre material has gone to form tenuous, hair- 

 like crystals of a fineness eluding the eye. Upon 

 each spine is a cluster of such, a floret, a rosette, 

 and the fallen leaf, so adorned, has the aspect of a 

 coronet ringed about with delicate frost-plumes. 

 And so our little frost-manikin, like some of larger 

 stature, failed of his high purpose, but failed more 

 nobly than he knew. Spines first ! and he did it. 



Following the * Edge ' the tree-clad edge of 

 higher ground overlooking lower-lying flats we 

 observe that for the seventh day the rooks are absent 

 from the rookery. Every morning by sunrise they 

 are there, residents in summer, visitants from distant 

 sleeping-quarters in winter ; but, throughout the 

 week of fog, they have been entirely absent. This 

 would seem natural enough if we judged them by 

 human standards ; but there is a theory, widely held, 

 that birds are endowed with a 'sense of direction.' 

 Such a theory is advanced in explanation of the fact 

 that migrating birds generally make their way with 

 confidence and precision between those countries in 

 which they pass the nesting season and those where 

 they winter, and vice versa. If birds are in 

 possession of such a sense of direction, one would 

 have thought that our rooks, passing to and fro 



