the snow the footprint of a life superior 

 to anything of which zoology takes cog- 

 nizance. "Why do the vast plains give 

 us pleasure," he asks, "the twilight of the 

 bent and half -buried woods? Is not all 

 there consonant with virtue, justice, 

 purity, courage, magnanimity? Are we 

 not cheered by the sight? And does not 

 all this amount to the track of a higher 

 life than the otter's, a life which has not 

 gone by and left a footprint merely, but 

 is there with its beauty, its music, its per- 

 fume, its sweetness, to exhilarate and 

 recreate us? 



"Did this great snow come to reveal 

 the track merely of some timorous hare, 

 or of the Great Hare whose track no 

 hunter has seen?" 



A SPECTACLE OF ENCHANTMENT 



Apart from the phenomena of the 

 snow, there occurs at rare intervals dur- 

 ing the winter what Thoreau speaks of 

 as a "frozen mist," when the trees and all 

 other outdoor objects are covered in the 

 early morning with a delicate hoar frost. 

 This, of course, soon melts under the rays 

 of the sun ; but while it lingers the spec- 

 tacle is one of enchantment. 



"No snow has fallen, but, as it were, 

 the vapor has been caught by the trees 

 like a cobweb. The trees are bright, 

 hoary forms, the ghosts of trees. Closely 

 examined or at a distance, it is just like 

 the sheaf-like forms of vegetation and 

 the diverging crystals on the window- 

 panes. You look up and behold the 

 hugest pine, as tall as a steeple, all frosted 

 over. Nature has now gone into her 

 winter palace." 



Akin to this phenomenon are the crys- 

 tallized "rosettes," as Thoreau calls them, 

 which are found sprinkling the surface 

 of the ice after a night of severe cold. 

 "They look like a loose web of small 

 white feathers springing from a tuft of 

 down, as if a feather bed had been shaken 

 over the ice. They are, on a close exami- 

 nation, surprisingly perfect leaves, like 

 ferns." 



Frequently accompanying these feath- 

 ery crystals, which are "so thin and frag- 

 ile that they melt under your breath while 

 looking closely at them," there is another 

 form of needle-shaped crystals in bun- 



POISON-DOGWOOD BERRIES: MASSA- 

 CHUSETTS 



Thoreau has numerous references in his 

 winter notes to the novelty and beauty of the 

 fruit of the poison-dogwood, which hangs in 

 clustered panicles from the leafless stems of 

 the shrub. 



175 



