14 STUDIES. IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



sufficient to give life to the objects that slumber be- 

 neath. 



Besides the pleasing objects already described as pe- 

 culiar to the season, there are many beautiful appear- 

 ances formed by the freezing of waters and the crystal- 

 lization of vapors, which one can never cease to 

 examine with delight. One of the most brilliant 

 spectacles of this kind is exhibited on a frosty morn- 

 ing, after the prevalence of a damp sea-breeze. The 

 crystals, almost imperceptibly minute, are distributed 

 like the delicate filaments of the microscopic mosses, 

 over the withered herbs and leafless shrubbery, creating 

 a sort of mimic vegetation in the late abodes of the 

 flowers. Vast sheets of thin ice overspread the plains, 

 beneath which the water has sunk into the earth, leav- 

 ing the vacant spots of a pure whiteness, and forming 

 hundreds of little fairy circles, of a peculiarly fantastic 

 appearance. The ferns and sedges that lift up their 

 bended blades and feathers through the plates of ice, 

 coated with millions of crystals, resemble, while spark- 

 ling in the rays of the sun, the finest jewelry. After 

 a damp and frosty night, these appearances are singu- 

 larly beautiful, and all the branches of the trees glitter 

 with them, as if surrounded with a network of dia- 

 monds. 



These exhibitions of frostwork are still more magnifi- 

 cent at waterfalls, where a constant vapor arises with 

 the spray, and deposits upon the icicles that hang from 

 the projecting rocks, a plumage resembling the finest 

 ermine. Some of the icicles, by a constant accumula- 

 tion of water, which is always dripping from the crags, 

 have attained the size of pillars, that seem almost to 

 support the shelving rocks from which they are sus- 



