A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



told of the Florida formation. This white 

 and brittle limestone is undermined by wa- 

 ter. 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 funda- 

 mental geology than this in the snow-storm : 

 wc are admitted into Nature's oldest labora- 

 tory, and see the working of the law by which 

 the foundations of the material universe 

 were laid, — the law or mystery of crys- 

 tallization. The earth is built upon crys- 

 tals ; the granite 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 con- 

 gealed 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, 



lO 



