CROSS-CUT VIEWS OF WINTER. 249 



a flight of needle crystals, or fling down a shower 

 of stars or feathers. The month has many types 

 of snow-storms, but the most beautiful of all is the 

 kind that is seen now. " It has no fight in it," as 

 Lowell says. As soft as whispers the light flakes 

 are shaken down through the still air, each one 

 falling in its appointed place over the wide stretch 

 of fields and woods — a real shower of stars. I 

 view them with the magnifier as they lightly fall 

 on my sleeve ; always six-rayed, but variously orna- 

 mented with the most exquisite filigree. 



How busy have the fairies been on this day in 

 arranging the molecules of water in so many inde- 

 scribable forms of beauty ! What infinite design- 

 ing is shown by the great Architect in shaping 

 such an endless diversity of stellar patterns, so 

 regularly fashioned that it seems erroneous to say 

 that the work is performed by the blind forces of 

 Nature. Here an elegantly-wrought design has 

 just been handed down by an unseen emissary of 

 the sky. It must not be breathed upon, lest the 

 minute particles, so systematically placed, be dis- 

 solved into a round drop of water. At regular 

 angles the six-needle crystals cross each other for 

 the framework on which are attached laterally 

 other rays of definite lengths, so nicely graduated 



