26 THE YEAR. 



moisture, and the leaf would be soft and languid. As 

 evening closed, the cold and condensed air would 

 let fall a treacherous dew-drop ; night would congeal 

 that dew-drop into hoar frost. Up rises the sun, 

 without cloud or fog to intercept his earliest ray ; the 

 hoar frost is instantly converted into thin vapour ; the 

 cold thereby produced chills the leaf, the sun scorches 

 it up, and, ere night comes, it is a black and lifeless 

 thing, and crumbles to dust between your fingers. 

 Next day would be the same ; indeed, every day would 

 be worse than has been stated, inasmuch as with a 

 continual succession of frosty nights the bud would 

 not expand at all. Thus there would be no food for 

 any living creature, and the country could not be 

 inhabited by man. 



Nor is there any apparent contrivance by which the 

 greater part of a globe such as that which we inhabit 

 could be made the abode of life, and a rational being, 

 such as man, enabled to range over it, than the one of 

 which we have given a short account, simple as it is. 

 And then, the countless round of novelties, all exciting, 

 all instructive, and all gratifying, that rise out of it. 

 The dead repose of the winter forest and the winter 

 fields ; the wind scattering the accumulations of im- 

 purity here ; the frost breaking the clods and molli- 

 fying the soil there ; the rain saturating the earth in 

 one place, and filling the cavities and reservoirs of the 

 springs in another ; the snow throwing its protecting 

 mantle over the roots of the perennial, and the seeds of 

 the annual herbage, or accumulating upon the moun- 

 tains in order to irrigate and refresh the valleys at a time 



