Impressions 



ings from the scene. Not they alone, but snow, 

 frost, blue sky and rosy light, were a whole 

 that nothing could surpass, and how vain the 

 hope that one may tell its story! Words ever 

 fail us when we need them most. 



Nothing could have been more suggestive of 

 freedom than each one of these birds, yet, as it 

 proved, there was a bond among them that not 

 one disregarded. Their happiness was in asso- 

 ciation. A sharp alarm-note sounded, and as 

 one they rose into the air and were gone. A 

 strange feeling of loneliness came over me. 

 Crystals are relations of too remote degree 

 beautiful, indeed, but we lack the skill to inter- 

 pret their message. Not so the bird. Our 

 heart goes out to it, notwithstanding never a 

 truer line was written than this : 



" There is no more exquisite poetry in the 

 world than that which lies in certain depart- 

 ments of science, and there is nothing more po- 

 etic in science than a garden of these frail, 

 strange, exquisite ice-plants, composed only of 

 frozen dew, arranging itself in leaf and flower 

 forms and glittering like burnished and frosted 

 silver in the sunlight of an Alpine morning. ' ' 



47 



