38 
RURAL HOURS. 
the commencement of a glacier, for it is precisely on this princi- 
ple that glaciers are formed and continue to extend until they 
stretch at last into the floweiy meadows, as in Switzerland, where 
you find strawberries and ice in the same field. Let a snow-bank 
harden into ice by successive thaws and frosts, pass through one 
summer, and the next year it will be more than doubled in bulk, 
continuing to increase in size, and consequently in strength, until 
it bids defiance to the greatest heats of summer. It is in this wajq 
that from the higher peaks of the Alps and Andes, covered with 
these vast ice mantles, five thousand years old, glaciers stretch 
far down into the region of grass and flowers, increasing rather 
than diminishing every year, since what is lost in summer seldom 
equals what is added in winter. 
Thursday, \Zth — A solitary goldfinch on the lawn. They win- 
ter about New York, but seldom return here in large numbers be- 
fore the 1 st of May. 
A brown creeper has been running over the locusts on the 
lawn for several days ; it is unusual to see them in the village, but 
this bird remained so long that his identity was clearly settled. 
The little fellow continued for an hour or more among the same 
trees visited previously by the nut-hatch, and during that time he 
was not still a second. Always alighting on the trunk near the 
roots, he ascended to the top ; then taking flight, alighted at the 
roots of the next, repeating again and again the same evolutions 
with imtiring rapidity. If he found the insects he was in search 
of, he must have swallowed them without much ceremony, for he 
never seemed to pause for the purpose of eating. Probably, like 
the nut-hatches, these birds neglect the smaller limbs of a tree be- 
cause their prey is not found there. 
