WINTER MARVELS 13 



feet little leaflets, fern-like, with a distinct, 

 straight, slender midrib raying from the centre. 

 On each side of each midrib there is a transparent, 

 thin blade with a crenate edge. How full of the 

 creative genius is the air in which these are gen- 

 erated ! I should hardly admire more if real stars 

 fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of 

 genius, full of the divinity, so that not a snow- 

 flake escapes- its fashioning hand. Nothing is 

 cheap and coarse, neither dewdrops nor snow- 

 flakes. Soon the storm increases (it was already 

 very severe to face), and the snow becomes finer, 

 more white and powdery. 



" Who knows but this is the original form of all 

 snowflakes, but that, when I observe these crystal 

 stars falling around me, they are only just gen- 

 erated in the low mist next the earth. I am nearer 

 to the source of the snow, its primal auroral, and 

 golden hour of infancy ; commonly the flakes reach 

 us travel-worn and agglomerated, comparatively, 

 without order or beauty, far down in their fall, 

 like men in their advanced age. As for the cir- 

 cumstances under which this occurs, it is quite 

 cold, and the driving storm is bitter to face, though 

 very little snow is falling. It comes almost hori- 

 zontally from the north. ... A divinity must 

 have stirred within them, before the crystals did 

 thus shoot and set : wheels of the storm chariots. 

 The same law that shapes the earth and the stars 

 shapes the snowflake. Call it rather snow star. 



