and
secondary fires in the reflection of light from every tree and stalk,
for the preservation of animal life and the ultimate melting of these
accumulated drifts. Around each trunk or stone the snow has melted and
fallen back. It is a singular fact, established beyond doubt by science,
that the snow is absolutely less influenced by the direct rays of the
sun than by these reflections. "If a blackened card is placed upon the
snow or ice in the sunshine, the frozen mass underneath it will be
gradually thawed, while that by which it is surrounded, though exposed
to the full power of solar heat, is but little disturbed. If, however,
we reflect the sun's rays from a metal surface, an exactly contrary
result takes place: the uncovered parts are the first to melt, and the
blackened card stands high above the surrounding portion." Look round
upon this buried meadow, and you will see emerging through the white
surface a thousand stalks of grass, sedge, osmunda, golden-rod, mullein,
Saint-John's-wort, plaintain, and eupatorium,--an allied army of the
sun, keeping up a perpetual volley of innumerable rays upon the yielding
snow.

It is their last dying service. We misplace our tenderness in winter,
and look with pity upon the leafless trees. But there is no tragedy
in the trees: each is not dead, but sleepeth; and each bears a future
summer of buds safe nestled on its bosom, as a mother reposes with her
baby at her breast. The same security of life pervades every woody
shrub: the alder and the birch have their catkins all ready for the
first day of spring, and the sweet-fern has even now filled with
fragrance its folded blossom. Winter is no such solid bar between season
and season as we fancy, but only a slight check and interruption: one
may at any time produce these March blossoms by bringing the buds into
the warm house; and the petals of the May-flower sometimes show their
pink and white edges in autumn. But every grass-blade and flower-stalk
is a mausoleum of vanished summer, itself crumbling to dust, never to
rise again. Each child of June, scarce distinguishable in November
against the background of moss and rocks and bushes, is brought into
final prominence in December by the white snow which imbeds it. The
delicate flakes collapse and fall back around it, but they retain their
inexorable hold. Thus delicate is the action of Nature,--a finger of
air, and a grasp of iron.

We pass the old red foundry, banked in with sno