Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/140

126 Nature was poor and mean, and I was now convinced that she turned off as good work as ever. What a world we live in! Where are the jewelers' shops? There is nothing handsomer than a snow-flake and a dew-drop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snow-flake and dew-drop that he sends down. We think that the one mechanically coheres, and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill.

Jan. 6, 1859. To Martial Miles's.  Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl, Strix Acadica, which he caught alive with his hands about a week ago. He had induced it to eat, but it died. It was a funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and one half inches long to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the claws, and nineteen in alar extent, not so long by a considerable as a robin, though much stouter. This one had three (not two, and Nuttall says three) white bars on its tail, but no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet were feathered quite to the extremity of the toes, looking like whitish mice, or as when one pulls stockings over his boots. As usual, the white spots on the upper sides of the wings are smaller and a more distinct white, while those