WINTER WIND. 99 



then it is confined within narrow limits ; for though the 

 plants that grow in the sea have their budding time 

 and their fall of the leaf, as may be seen in the delicate 

 shoots of the sweet sea-weed (fucus saccharinus) which 

 form so wholesome a sail ad in May and June, and the 

 masses of large leaves that are rolled toward the shores 

 by the action of the autumnal gales, yet the range of 

 the season there is very much limited ; and as the action 

 of the ocean, both in the vapour of water, and the 

 more active ingredients which it gives out to the at- 

 mosphere, is too important for being suspended, that 

 action like the respiration and circulation of animals, 

 goes on while the other faculties are asleep, whether 

 that sleep be for the night or the winter. 



But though reflection can find abundant scope in 

 nature under any circumstances, the stillness of crea- 

 tion in the winter months has less of fascination to the 

 senses ; and that fascination is, after all, the charm by 

 which we are enticed to the "study of nature. There is 

 a calmness, but a melancholy calmness, in the serene 

 winter's day, and there is a great deal of sublimity in 

 the winter's storm, It is not, however, the kind that 

 is most pleasing. The very sound of the wind is harsh, 

 and " howling" is not at any other period so expressive 

 of the voice of the storm. It is harsh and grating, 

 and the sound of a winter tempest in a naked forest is 

 more like the rattle of innumerable pebbles than of a 

 sweeping flood. Ground, mountains, every where that 

 it alights, it has the same harsh rattle, and amid the 

 frost and snow the wind will not sing : those who have 

 heard winds in upland countries, where the seasons are 

 marked and the winters severe, know full well, as they 

 hear the sound of the wind at night, whether that wind 



