THE RIGORS OF WINTER. 273 
known operations and contrivances, too delicate and 
mysterious to be seen, or even comprehended, by the 
blindness, the defectibility of our nature — things of 
which we have no information, being beyond the range 
of any of the works or the employments of mankind ! 
We may gather our pear, be pleased with its form or its 
flavor ; we may magnify its vessels, analyze its fluids, 
yet be no more sensible of its elaborate formation, and 
the multiplicity of influences and operations requisite 
to conduct it to our use, than a wandering native of a 
polar clime could be of the infinite number of proces- 
ses that are necessary to furnish a loaf of bread, from 
plowing the soil to drawing from the oven. This is but 
an isolated instance, amidst thousands of others more 
complicated still. How utterly inconceivable then are 
the labors, the contrivances, the combinations, that are 
going forward, and accomplishing, in this our dull sea- 
son of the year, in that host of nature’s productions 
with which, shortly, we shall everywhere be sur- 
rounded ! 
Jan. 20th. — A keen frost, and the ground covered 
with snow, present a scene of apparent suffering and 
want to many of our poor little birds ; but the preserva- 
tion of the fowls of the air, which sow not nor gather 
into barns, has been beautifully instanced to us, as a 
manifest evidence of a superintending Providence : the 
full force of this testimony is most strongly impressed 
upon us in a season like this, when winter rules with 
rigor, and we marvel how the life of these beings can 
be supported when the waters are bound up, and earth 
and all its products hidden by a dense covering of snow; 
Many of the small birds obtain subsistence by picking 
the refuse of our corn-stacks, by seeds scattered about 
our homestalls and cattle-yards, but multitudes of others 
are in no way dependent upon man for shelter or sup- 
port, do not even approach his dwelling, but are main- 
tained by the universal bounty of Providence ; as the 
wood-lark, the meadow-lark, the chats, and several 
others ; but by what means they are maintained in a 
period like this is not quite manifest. The portion that 
they require is probably small, yet it must be insect 
