2 9 o AUTUMN AND WINTER 



roadway is a little bleached, the tops of the clods in the tilth 

 are just lightened like hair over the temple. The difference 

 between the white and the black frost is, of course, the 

 amount of moisture in the air that and nothing more ; but 

 all the very hard frosts are black. Though a damp cold is 

 vastly more palpable, more penetrating to us, the thermo- 

 meter feels differently. Moisture is always a source of 

 warmth. It is a blanket to the earth. When clouds canopy 

 the earth heat cannot radiate far. It is conserved and frost 

 is discouraged. When mist and fog wrap the earth they 

 always hold heat from the earth, acting in some degree like 

 the clouds. So it comes about, though few country people 

 notice it or will believe it, that the worst sufferers from frost 

 are plants in the dry valleys. But the frosts of winter, as 

 opposed to those of spring, excel both in splendour and in 

 use. They are as beautiful as beneficent. No one has 

 described the wonder of frost with either the accuracy or 

 power of Francis Thompson, that unhappy genius, who, like 

 his namesake, and in much the same manner, destroyed in 

 London a power of observation meant for country life. 



All frost and all snow are crystalline. There lies the 

 wonder, whether you look at them with a microscope or the 

 naked eye. It is a delight to watch the growing of frost. There 

 is no better place for seeing the crystals form than in the 

 corner seat of a railway carriage when frost is bearing. Your 

 breath is written in letters on the window-pane almost as you 

 breathe it. It is patterned out into a landscape of successive 

 crystals, each quite perfect in shape and symmetry. But the 

 sight is stranger on a sheet of water. Frost seizes the water 

 in delicate rays, and afterwards fits the filigree together, and 

 pieces out the pattern. As the cold falls below the freezing- 

 point you see a sort of shiver move along an undefined line 

 across the water, as a nerve vibrates under the skin ; and 



