44 



WINTER 



with cedar bark and so warm that never a tooth of 

 the cold can bite through ! 



" I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer 



Shook off the pouthery snaw, 

 And hail'd the morning with a cheer, 

 A cottage-rousing craw." 



VIII 



This winter I have had two letters asking me how 

 , best to study the mosses and lichens, and I answered, 

 '" Begin now." Winter, when the leaves are off, the 

 ground bare, the birds and flowers gone, and all is 

 reduced to singleness and simplicity winter is the 

 time to observe the shapes, colors, varieties, and 

 growth of the lichens. Not that every lover of na- 

 il ture needs to know the long Latin names (and many 

 | of these lesser plants have no other names), but that 

 every lover of the out-of-doors should notice them 

 the part they play in the color of tilings, the place 

 1 they hold in the scheme of things, their exquisite 

 if shapes and strange habits. 



, 





IX 



You should see the brook, " bordered with spark- 

 ling frost-work ... as gay as with its fringe of 

 summer flowers." You should examine under a 

 microscope the wonderful crystal form of the snow- 

 flakes each flake shaped by an infinitely accurate 

 hand according to a pattern that seems the perfec- 

 tion, the very poetry, of mechanical drawing. 



