106 A SNOW-STORM. 



illustration of what I have read and been told of the 

 Florida formation. This white and brittle limestone 

 is undermined by water. Here are the dimples and 

 depressions, the sinks and the wells, the springs and 

 the lakes. Some places a mouse might break through 

 the surface and reveal the water far beneath, or the 

 snow gives way of its own weight and you have a 

 minute Florida well, with the truncated cone-shape 

 and all. The arched and subterranean pools and 

 passages are there likewise. 



But there is a more beautiful and fundamental 

 geology than this in the snow-storm : we are admitted 

 into nature's oldest laboratory and see the working 

 of the law by which the foundations of the material 

 universe were laid, the law or mystery of crystal- 

 lization. The earth is built upon crystals ; the gran- 

 ite rock is only a denser and more compact snow, or 

 a kind of ice that was vapor once and may be vapor 

 again. " Every stone is nothing else but a congealed 

 lump of frozen earth," says Plutarch. By cold and 

 pressure air can be liquefied, perhaps solidified. A 

 little more time, a little more heat, and the hills are 

 but April snow-banks. Nature has but two forms : 

 the cell and the crystal the crystal first, the cell last. 

 All organic nature is built up of the cell; all inor- 

 ganic of the crystal. Cell upon cell rises the vegetable, 

 rises the animal; crystal wedded to and compacted 

 with crystal stretches the earth beneath them. See 

 in the falling snow the old cooling and precipitation, 

 and the shooting, radiating forms, that are the ar- 

 chitects of planet and globe. 



