NATURE IN ARMOR. 1 



were the crows, the chickadees, and above all, 

 the adventurous robins ? " Here I am," a robin 

 seemed to say from the roadside, and at the 

 same instant I saw a bird fly from a dense tangle 

 of briers, bushes, cedars and tall maples, to the 

 highest branch of a tree, shake himself thor- 

 oughly, and then give the familiar robin signal of 

 alarm and inquiry. He was answered by a sec- 

 ond bird, and presently three of them flew over 

 my head and down the hill towards a grove of 

 pines. I had a clear view of them through my 

 opera-glass. 



A few steps further on I came to a white birch- 

 tree, bent by the ice till its head rested in a 

 snowbank on the opposite side of the road from 

 its but. It formed an ice-screen thirty feet 

 long and nine feet high, directly across the road. 

 The tree measured nearly three feet in circum- 

 ference at its base. Near by a grove of white 

 birches had become a shapeless tangle of ice-wires 

 and cables. The eye could not separate any one 

 tree from the mass, and the tops of all were rest- 

 ing upon the snow. The road was lined with 

 bleached asters and goldenrod. Not only were 

 their stems ice-hung, but their pale, flower-like 

 involucres were embedded in nodding balls of 

 ice, half an inch in diameter. So delicate were 

 these mock flowers and so erect and perfect their 

 form within the crystal, that it seemed certain 



