14 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



sufficient to give life to the objects that slumber be 

 neath. 



Besides the pleasing objects already described as pe 

 culiar to the season, there are many beautiful appear 

 ances formed by the freezing of waters and the crystal 

 lization of vapors, which one can never cease to 

 examine with delight. One of the most brilliant 

 spectacles of this kind is exhibited on a frosty morn 

 ing, after the prevalence of a damp sea-breeze. The 

 crystals, almost imperceptibly minute, are distributed 

 like the delicate filaments of the microscopic mosses, 

 over the withered herbs and leafless shrubbery, creating 

 a sort of mimic vegetation . in the late abodes of the 

 flowers. Vast sheets of thin ice overspread the plains, 

 beneath which the water has sunk into the earth, leav 

 ing the vacant spots of a pure whiteness, and forming 

 hundreds of little fairy circles, of a peculiarly fantastic 

 appearance. The ferns and sedges that lift up their 

 bended blades and feathers through the plates of ice, 

 coated with millions of crystals, resemble, while spark 

 ling in the rays of the sun, the finest jewelry. After 

 a damp and frosty night, these appearances are singu 

 larly beautiful, and all the branches of the trees glitter 

 with them, as if surrounded with a network of dia 

 monds. 



These exhibitions of frostwork are still more magnifi 

 cent at waterfalls, where a constant vapor arises with 

 the spray, and deposits upon the icicles that hang from 

 the projecting rocks, a plumage resembling the finest 

 ermine. Some of the icicles, by a constant accumula 

 tion of water, which is always dripping from the crags, 

 have attained the size of pillars, that seem almost to 

 support the shelving rocks from which they are sus- 



