412 JANUARY. 



honors that have garlanded the forests, and in an hour 

 they have disappeared forever. 



Beside the pleasing objects already described as pecul- 

 iar to the season, there are many beautiful appearances 

 formed by the freezing of waters and the crystallization 

 of vapors which one can never cease to examine with 

 delight. One of the most brilliant spectacles of this kind 

 is displayed on a frosty morning, 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, leaving 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 

 sparkling in the rays of the sun, the finest jewelry. 

 After a damp and frosty night, these appearances are 

 singularly beautiful, and all the branches of the trees 

 glitter with them as if surrounded with a network of 

 diamonds. 



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 accumulation of water 

 which is always dripping from the crags, have attained 

 the size of pillars, that seem almost to support the shelv- 

 ing rocks from which they are suspended. The foam of 

 the water has been frozen into large white masses, like 

 a snow-bank in appearance, but as solid as ice. The 

 shrubs that project from the crevices of the rocks are 



