Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/397

Rh and hollow in the snow where there was no track for rods around, as if a large snow-ball or cannon-ball had struck it, where apparently the birds had not paused in their flight. It is evidently a regular thing with them thus to lodge in the snow.

Feb. 13, 1859. On ice to Fair Haven Pond. The yellowish ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals very much like bits of asbestos, an inch or more long, sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two. I think this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice, and froze in the night. It is sprinkled like some kind of grain, and is in certain places much more thickly strewn, as where a little snow shows itself above the ice.—The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon at half-past three o'clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate. Though I distinguish these colors everywhere toward the sun, they are so much more abundantly reflected to me from two directions that I see two distinct rays or arms, so to