SNOW. 89 



fection, as it is in the Winter, it is exceptionally 

 beautiful when the numberless and elegantly 

 disposed limbs, branches, twigs and spray are 

 emphasized, so io speak, by the presence of the 

 pure and brilliant substance that sets them off. 



From our brief and hasty consideration of the 

 beauty of snow, let us pass to its utility. How 

 often, before the advent of frost — ^hard biting, all- 

 destroying frost — that, unchecked and unresisted, 

 would press life out of the vegetable world, has 

 Nature gently and softly and noiselessly sent the 

 white, all-enveloping mantle of snow to keep 

 warmth, and, with warmth, life, in the atmosphere 

 which most closely and immediately invests the 

 plant regions. Cold and icy as it is to the touch, 

 it is nevertheless a most effectual garment ; for, 

 as we know, our clothes do not actually warm 

 us, but only keep in close contact with our bodies 

 the warmth which the latter radiate ; so the snow, 

 intensely cold as, in itself, it is, keeps in and 

 around the plants it covers, both the heat which 

 they themselves give off', and the heat which is 

 radiated from the ground beneath them. 



