Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/103

Rh side of houses and fences. I notice that in the angle made by our house and shed, a S. W. exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. The snow is like a mould, showing the form of the eddying currents of air which have been impressed on it, while the drift and all the rest is that which fell between the currents or where they counterbalanced each other. These boundary lines are mountain barriers.

The white-in-tails, or grass finches, linger pretty late, flitting in flocks. They come only so near winter as the white in their tails indicates.

The snow buntings and the tree sparrows are the true spirits of the snow-storm. They are the animated beings that ride upon it and have their life in it.

The snow is the great betrayer. It not only shows the track of mice, otters, etc., etc., which else we should rarely, if ever, see, but the tree sparrows are more plainly seen against its white ground, and they in turn are attracted by the dark weeds it reveals. It also drives the crows and other birds out of the woods to the villages for food. We might expect to find in the snow the footprint of a life superior to our own, of which no zoölogy takes cognizance. Is there no