X. 



THAWING. 



NE of the most curious and 

 interesting for the atten- 

 tive student of Nature 

 of the climatic influences 

 which change the varied 

 aspects of our sylvan 

 landscapes, is the sudden 

 accession of warmth, which 

 oftentimes, in frosty mid- 

 Winter, causes the almost 



magical disappearance from hill and meadow, 

 from woodland, plain, and river-bank, and in our 

 towns and villages from house-top, street, and 

 garden, of their enveloping mantle of snow. If 

 there be an absorbing attractiveness in the silent 

 grandeur of the process by which Nature covers 

 every visible object with a garment fashioned in 



