232 CROSS-CUT VIEWS OF WINTER. 



ward and on the mountains, as though Nature had 

 assigned to them the drudgery of enlivening the 

 scenery in bleak and barren spots. 



The brook below the hill that flows from a warm 

 spring has a melodious gurgle ; the ice casing here 

 and there along its course, over and between the 

 stones, is a kind of sounding-board that propagates 

 the merriment, making it more musical than in 

 summer. Pry off some of these ice casings with 

 your cane and observe the different exquisite pat- 

 terns of cut-glass dishes ! Note also in places how 

 the large drops or fragments of water have by 

 chance become detached from the main body of 

 the stream, and appear like inflated leeches, push- 

 ing out their heads and attenuating their bodies 

 into filaments of quicksilver, as if feeling for the 

 most convenient channel for escape. The rim of 

 the warm spring above is ornamented with frost- 

 work of curious and beautiful forms. What won- 

 derful phenomena ! Take up a tuft of grass 

 whereon the crystals have accumulated, and in a 

 sheltered place, directly "in the eye of the sun," 

 see with your magnifier how the hexagons, stars 

 and prisms with which the miniature but gorgeous 

 spires of the ice palaces are made, gradually melt 

 away. There totters a steeple. There a delicately 



