X. 



THAWING. 



NB of the most curious and 

 interesting — for the atten- 

 tive student of Nature — 

 of the climatic influences 

 which change the varied 

 aspects of our sylvan 

 landscapes, is the sudden 

 accession of warmth, which 

 oftentimes, in frosty mid- 

 Winter, causes the almost 

 magical disappearance from hill and meadow, 

 from woodland, plain, and river-bank, and — -in our 

 towns and villages — from house-top, street, and 

 garden, of their enveloping mantle of snow. If 

 there be an absorbing attractiveness in the silent 

 grandeur of the process by which Nature covers 

 every visible object with a garment fashioned — in 



