The winter of 1837 was unusually favorable for this. In December of
that year, the Genius of vegetation seemed to hover by night over its
summer haunts with unusual persistency. Such a hoarfrost, as is very
uncommon here or anywhere, and whose full effects can never be witnessed
after sunrise, occurred several times. As I went forth early on a still
and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness
caught napping; on this side huddled together with their gray hairs
streaming in a secluded valley, which the sun had not penetrated; on that
hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and
grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their
diminished heads in the snow. The river, viewed from the high bank,
appeared of a yellowish green color, though all the landscape was white.
Every tree, shrub, and spire of grass, that could raise its head above the
snow, was covered with a dense ice-foliage, answering, as it were, leaf
for leaf to its summer dress. Even the fences had put forth leaves in the
night. The centre, diverging, and more minute fibres were perfectly
distinct, and the edges regularly indented. These leaves were on the side
of the twig or stubble opposite to the sun, meeting it for the most part
at right angles, and there were others standing out at all possible angles
upon these and upon one another, with no twig or stubble supporting them.
When the first rays of the sun slanted over the scene, the grasses seemed
hung with innumerable jewels, which jingled merrily as they were brushed
by the foot of the traveller, and reflected all the hues of the rainbow
as he moved from side to side. It struck me that these ghost leaves, and
the green ones whose forms they assume, were the creatures of but one law;
that in obedience to the same law the vegetable juices swell gradually
into the perfect leaf, on the one hand, and the crystalline particles
troop to their standard in the same order, on the other. As if the
material were indifferent, but the law one and invariable, and every plant
in the spring but pushed up into and filled a permanent and eternal mould,
which, summer and winter forever, is waiting to be filled.
This foliate structure is common to the coral and the plumage of birds,
and to how large a part of animate and inanimate nature. The same
independence of law on matter is observable in many other instances, as in
the natural rhymes, when some animal form, color, or odor, has its
counterpart in some vegetable. As, indeed, all rhymes imply an eternal
melody, independent of any particular sense.
As confirmation of the fact, that vegetation is but a kind of
crystallization, every one may observe how, upon the edge of the melting
frost on the window, the needle-shaped particles are bundled together
so as to resemble fields waving with grain, or shocks rising here and
there from the stubble; on one side the vegetation of the torrid zone,
high-towering palms and widespread banyans, such as are seen in pictures
of oriental scenery; on the other, arctic pines stiff frozen, with
downcast branches.
