160 EIVERBY 



make him look very gay and dressy. It adds to his 

 expression considerably, and makes him look alert 

 and beau-like, and every inch a male. The grass 

 is green under the snow, and has grown perceptibly. 

 The warmth of the air seems to go readily through 

 a covering of ice and snow. Note how quickly the 

 ice lets go of the door-stones, though completely 

 covered, when the day becomes warm." 



The farmers say a deep snow draws the frost out 

 of the ground. It is certain that the frost goes out 

 when the ground is deeply covered for some time, 

 though it is of course the warmth rising up from the 

 depths of the ground that does it. A winter of deep 

 snows is apt to prove fatal to the peach buds. The 

 frost leaves the ground, the soil often becomes so 

 warm that angle-worms rise to near the surface, the 

 sap in the trees probably stirs a little; then there 

 comes a cold wave, the mercury goes down to ten 

 or fifteen below zero, and the peach buds are killed. 

 It is not the cold alone that does it; it is the warmth 

 at one end and the extreme cold at the other. 

 AVhen the snow is removed so that the frost can get 

 at the roots also, peach buds will stand fourteen or 

 fifteen degrees below zero. 



March 7, 1881. A perfect spring day at last, — 

 still, warm, and without a cloud. Tapped two trees ; 

 the sap runs, the snow runs, everything runs. 

 Bluebirds the only birds yet. Thermometer forty- 

 two degrees in the shade. A perfect sap day. A 

 perfect sap day is a crystalline day; the night must 

 have a keen edge of frost, and the day a keen edge 



