the thistle in the early days of October. Gently as the fairy balloons
of the dandelion they float through the air and rest upon the withered
leaves of the white oaks. Soon they come faster, and now the
forest-crowned ridge half a mile away which was in plain sight a
minute ago is screened from view by the fast falling white curtain.

"He giveth snow like wool." Very beautiful is this snow as it softens
the rugged, corky limbs of the mossy cup oaks. It is not like the
hard, granular snow which stung your face like sand when you were out
in the storm a month ago, when the trumpets of the sky were doing a
fanfare, the wind raged from the northwest, the top of a tall black
cherry snapped like a shipmast and crashed through the forest rigging
to the white deck below, while the gnarled limbs of the big elms
looked like the muscles of giants wrestling with the storm king. This
storm to-day is not "announced by all the trumpets of the sky." It
comes softly as the breath of morning on a May meadow. It silences
every sound and curtains you into a rare studio where you may admire
its own exceeding beauty. There have not been so many beautiful snow
crystals in any storm of the winter. You may see half a dozen
different varieties on your coat sleeve with the naked eye, and you
pull out a strong lens the better to observe the exceeding beauty of
these six pointed stars. They are among Nature's most exquisite
forms, and they are shown in bewildering variety. The molecules of
snow arrange themselves in crystals of the hexagonal system, every
angle exactly sixty degrees. The white color of the snow is caused by
a combination of the prismatic colors of these snow crystals. Some of
them are regular hexagons, with six straight sides; others are like a
wheel with six spokes, with jewels clinging to each spoke. Many men
have spent a lifetime in the study of these fairy forms. W. A.
Bentley, of the United States weather bureau, after twenty years of