Vegetation has been made the type of all growth; but as in crystals the
law is more obvious, their material being more simple, and for the most
part more transient and fleeting, would it not be as philosophical as
convenient to consider all growth, all filling up within the limits of
nature, but a crystallization more or less rapid?
On this occasion, in the side of the high bank of the river, wherever
the water or other cause had formed a cavity, its throat and outer edge,
like the entrance to a citadel, bristled with a glistening ice-armor.
In one place you might see minute ostrich-feathers, which seemed the
waving plumes of the warriors filing into the fortress; in another, the
glancing, fan-shaped banners of the Lilliputian host; and in another, the
needle-shaped particles collected into bundles, resembling the plumes of
the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears. From the under side of the
ice in the brooks, where there was a thicker ice below, depended a mass of
crystallization, four or five inches deep, in the form of prisms, with
their lower ends open, which, when the ice was laid on its smooth side,
resembled the roofs and steeples of a Gothic city, or the vessels of a
crowded haven under a press of canvas. The very mud in the road, where the
ice had melted, was crystallized with deep rectilinear fissures, and the
crystalline masses in the sides of the ruts resembled exactly asbestos in
the disposition of their needles. Around the roots of the stubble and
flower-stalks, the frost was gathered into the form of irregular conical
shells, or fairy rings. In some places the ice-crystals were lying upon
granite rocks, directly over crystals of quartz, the frost-work of a
longer night, crystals of a longer period, but to some eye unprejudiced by
the short term of human life, melting as fast as the former.
In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals, this singular fact is recorded,
which teaches us to put a new value on time and space. "The distribution
of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape
Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean, some
fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point
of land has hitherto proved a barrier to the migrations of many species of
Mollusca. Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the
intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from
mingling by the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other.... Of
the one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass
to the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the
Cape."
That common muscle, the _Unio complanalus_, or more properly
_fluviatilis_, left in the spring by the musk-rat upon rocks and stumps,
appears to have been an important article of food with the Indians. In one
place, where they are said to have feasted, they are found in large
quantities, at an elevation of thirty feet above the river, filling the
soil to the depth of a foot, and mingled with ashes and Indian remains.
The works we have placed at the head of our chapter, with as much license,
as the preacher selects his text, are such as imply more labor than
enthusiasm. The State wanted complete catalogues of its natural riches,
with such additional facts merely as would be directly useful.
The reports on Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, and Invertebrate Animals,
however, indicate labor and research, and have a value independent of the
object of the legislature.
Those on Herbaceous Plants and Birds cannot be of much value, as long as
Bigelow and Nuttall are accessible. They serve but to indicate, with more
or less exactness, what species are found in the State.
