A MEADOW MUD-HOLE. 



149 



and who in the wide world loves not the lily ? 

 Let us accept her as an authority that this mud 

 has merit. 



There is a typical earth scar of the worthier 

 sort within easy reach of my door-yard. I 

 chanced upon it one February morning when 

 the surrounding meadows were frost-bound, but 

 the water was free, sparkling, and full of aquatic 

 life ; and there is not a month that it has not its 

 growth of green, if not a wealth of blossoms. 

 Even the plant life of the preceding summer 

 serves as a covering in winter, and a January 

 thaw starts the hardier grasses as surely as it 

 quickens the sheltered upland dandelions into 

 bloom. And on this bleak February day, when 

 the meadows were like smooth rock, the river a 

 glacier, and with scarce a trace of green to be 

 seen on the hillside, the expanding spathe of the 

 fetid cabbage a plant full worthy of a better 

 name was well above the ground, darkly green 

 and beautifully streaked with purple and gold ; 

 and a foot or more below the surface of the 

 water were even greener growths, tangles of 

 thread-like vine that quivered whenever a fright- 

 ened fish rushed by. Indeed, these delicate 

 growths are a delight to our many hardy fishes 

 that, scorning to hibernate when food and shel- 

 ter are so accessible, must laugh, I think, at the 

 darting ice-crystals that gather and grow strong 



