120 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



s'. The expected thaw arrived yesterday 

 was odious, half snow, half rain, and everything 

 dirty and dreary. My uncle and Frederick went 

 this afternoon to the poor man's garden, where 

 you know we saw the carrots raised up by the 

 little icy pillars ; but this thaw has made the 

 roads so wet, that I could not possibly go with 

 them. 



Frederick tells me that all the fairy colonnades 

 \vhich supported the earth about the carrots 

 are now melted, the earth has fallen down, and 

 the tops of the roots are to be seen, quite bare, 

 but above the ground, and appearing as if they 

 had been half pulled up by hand. 



I asked my uncle if frost pushes up any other 

 kind of root in that way, and he said that 

 these columns have a quite different effect on 

 fibrous roots, particularly the grasses. In con- 

 sequence of the strong matting together of 

 their roots, a whole piece of sward between two 

 cracks is sometimes lifted up by these pillars, so 

 as to separate it from the earth underneath. 

 When the columns dissolve, the sward sinks 

 into its former place, and the earth, which has 

 been loosened and minutely divided by the frozen 

 columns, affords a fine bed for the roots to strike 

 into, so that it is rather an advantage than an 

 injury to them to have been thus loosened. 

 After the frost is melted, he says, he has seen 

 patches of the sward lifted up with nearly as 



