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SPRING. 
looks cut just before setting, as if promising a 
morning visit. The night remains clear, with 
keen frost, and the wind steady at north, and 
blowing very gently. The sun rises bright in the 
morning,—the storm is over,—and the weather 
remains unbroken for four or five weeks. When 
the appointed days of the snow-storm are num- 
bered, a disturbance again takes place in the 
atmosphere, but it is of a different kind from the 
former. There are little sheets of lightning play- 
ing momentarily in the lower atmosphere, and 
the lustre of the stars is diminished; but still 
there is no cloud. The wind, however, dies away 
to a dead calm towards evening, and all is ready 
for the breaking storm. That operation is the 
first performed by the spring, and we shall bor- 
row the words of the ‘ British Naturalist’ wherein 
to describe it :—‘ As the spring gets the mastery, 
which is aided by the condensation which takes 
place during the night, it rises to a wind, the 
sound of which cannot be mistaken. The rigidity 
of trees, window-frames, and other wooden fabrics 
through which it passes, is relaxed; the withered 
grass and reeds, when these are exposed, moisten ; 
and the rattling and thumping are succeeded by 
murmuring harmony, in which, compared with 
the other, there is a good deal of music, and as 
the morning advances, and the animals come 
abroad, and man begins to be active, the hard 
metallic sounds are gone, and there is a softness 
about nature. There is always a delightful trans- 
parency about the atmosphere, because the little 
spicule of ice are gone, and the heat of the air is 
too much occupied in converting the snow and 
ice into water, for changing much of that into 
vapour. When the change is accompanied by rain, 
it is far more pleasant at the time, and there is a 
danger, almost a certain one, that the spring will 
be treacherous; and that, in consequence of the 
great heat required for melting the snow, and the 
evaporation of the rain together, frosts will return 
long before the process of thawing, so compara- 
tively slow, is completed. The slow melting of 
snow by rain compared by that of a warm atmo- 
sphere, which is constantly shifting by the wind, 
can be easily understood when it is remembered 
that the water which falls, even if it had the tem- 
perature of the greatest summer-heat, would be 
cooled down to the freezing point in melting half 
its weight of snow. But as the temperature can 
only be a little above freezing, the water will have 
the temperature of 32” before it has cooled perhaps 
one-tenth of its weight ; and as the water is a bad 
conductor of heat, and great part of the action of 
the oblique rays of the sun is reflected away from 
its surface, a rainy breaking of a storm is almost 
sure to be followed by frost, if it do not happen 
when the season is far advanced.’ In such a 
situation, and under such circumstances, the 
storm not unfrequently passes away in what is 
emphatically termed a gentle thaw ; and when 
this is the case, the spring comes under the most 
favourable circumstances. The snow is dissolved 
by atmospheric influence alone, without any rain 
from the clouds; although there are generally 
light clouds hovering about, ready to produce 
rain ifa returning frost should render a contest 
of the elements necessary. Besides its rare plea- 
santness, the gentle thaw is attended with several 
beneficial consequences. In the first place, there 
is no flooding of the low grounds, and no wash- 
ing of the soil from the more elevated ones ; but 
the snow forms a trough for the discharge of the 
water into which it is melted, and thus the coldest 
of the snow-water does not reach the surface of 
the land. In the second place, the water pro- 
duced by the melting of the snow sinks gradually 
into the earth, and the earth has been opened to 
receive a greater store than if it had been pelted 
by rain during winter. This is occasioned by the 
radiation of the heat from the lower strata of the 
earth, which is confined by the snow, and turned 
back again to act upon the earth. In the third 
place, this last circumstance produces a beginning 
of the spring under the shelter of the snow, which 
could not have taken place with free exposure to 
the atmosphere. The blade of the plant is pro- 
tected, and the roots have heat and moisture, 
and the air is excluded from them. They are 
thus placed under the most favourable circum- 
stances, and they are stimulated accordingly. 
The difference in this respect is very consider- 
able; for if, owing to the action of the wind dur- 
ing the fall, or to any other cause, one portion of 
a field has been exposed to the air while the frost 
continued, and another covered by the snow, it 
will be found that vegetation upon the part which 
the snow covered will be fresh, green, and vigor- 
ous, long before that upon the exposed part shows 
any decided signs of action. This, by the way, is 
the real cause why spring is so much more rapid, 
and meets with so fewer reverses, where the win- 
ter is firm and decided, but of moderate length, 
than it does when the winter is variable.” 
SPRING. A natural fountain,—a stream of 
water issuing from the ground. It is fed by the 
percolation of surface water through porous stra- 
ta in an elevation somewhere above it, and is 
caused by the obstruction or accumulation of 
the percolating water on a retentive stratum, 
forcing it along to find a vent in the crevice or 
porosity where the spring is situated. See the 
articles Artestan Wut and Gronocy, and the 
section “ Strata-Draining” of the article Drary- 
inc. A spring may have any volume from a 
‘mere thread of water to an incipient river, ac- 
cording to the extent of percolating surface 
which it drains and to the moistness of the cli- 
mate; and it may be either occasional, seasonal, 
or perennial, according to the circumstances of 
the percolation and the nature of the ground. 
Most springs, especially on hill sides and in upland 
districts, are cool and of comparatively uniform 
temperature, in consequence of the percolation 
which feeds them passing through great depths 
or wide expanses of strata, which are affected 
