400 OUR IGNORANCE OF THE 



tualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained in 

 the water. 



Jan. 10. The ground covered with snow, the 

 pools with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and 

 patched here and there with a mantle of white, 

 present a cheerless, dreary void ; no insects are 

 animating the air, and all our songsters are silent 

 and away ; a few miserable thrushes are hopping 

 on the ditch bank, swept bare by the wind ; and 

 the robin puffing out his feathers, and contracting 

 his neck into his body, is peeping with his fine 

 bright eyes into the windows from the cypress 

 bough. A few evergreens are waving their sprays, 

 and glittering in the light, yet making but poor 

 compensation for the variety, the flutter, the ver- 

 dure, of our summer. Though we have little 

 natural beauty to note or to record, we are not left 

 without a testimony of an over-ruling Power ; and, 

 however sad and melancholy things may appear at 

 the first view, yet a more steady observation will 

 manifest to us a presiding Providence and Mercy. 

 Frost and snow are but cheerless subjects for con- 

 templation, yet I would add a reflection in my 

 Journal of our passing events, or rather recall 

 from memory the truth, that science has made 

 known to us, revived by the sight of that frozen 

 pool. There is one universal body, inherent in 

 every known substance in nature, latent heat, 

 which chemists have agreed to call " caloric." By 



