TOUCHES OF NATURE 57 



farther on it will be as hard as a rock. A little 

 covering of dry grass or leaves is a great protection. 

 The moist places hold out long and the spring runs 

 never freeze. You find the frost has gone several 

 inches into the plowed ground, but on going to the 

 woods, and poking away the leaves and ddbris under 

 the hemlocks and cedars, you find there is no frost 

 at all. The Earth freezes her ears and toes and 

 naked places first, and her body last. 



If heat were visible, or if we represent it say by 

 smoke, then the December landscape would present 

 a curious spectacle. We should see the smoke lying 

 low over the meadows, thickest in the hollows and 

 moist places, and where the turf was oldest and 

 densest. It would cling to the fences and ravines. 

 Under every evergreen tree we should see the vapor 

 rising and filling the branches, while the woods of 

 pine and hemlock would be blue with it long after 

 it had disappeared from the open country. It 

 would rise from the tops of the trees, and be carried 

 this way and that with the wind. The valleys of 

 the great rivers, like the Hudson, would overflow 

 with it. /Large bodies of water become regular mag- 

 azines in which heat is stored during the summer, 

 and they give it out again during the fall and early 

 winter. ,, The early frosts keep well back from the 

 Hudson, skulking behind the ridges, and hardly 

 come over in sight at any point. But they grow 

 bold as the season advances, till the river's fires, too, 

 are put out and Winter covers it with his snows. 



