How different snow is from water! How white it is as it lies upon the earth like a winding-sheet, covering up the dead leaves and plants! How the wind that makes waves in the water heaps up the snow in drifts! The water slips from your hand as you grasp it, but the snow you can make into hard balls, or roll it up on the ground into larger ones to build snow forts. The snow lies quietly on the sides of hills and mountains, from which, the moment that it melts, it runs down into the valley below.
The different forms of the crystals of snow.
But, different as the snow is from water, it is nothing but frozen water. It is water made solid; and, as the water becomes solid up in the air before it falls, it forms itself into many different shapes. The snow seems to be all alike as you look at it as it falls. But it is not so. There is variety even here. The snow-flakes have various forms. We can see how different their shapes are if we look at them with a microscope, as they are here represented.
Snow-flakes are beautiful things to look at even with the naked eye. How light, and delicate, and feathery they are! When they are very large and the air is still, how slowly and steadily they fall! Let a few of them light upon your coat sleeve, where you can look at them, and you will admire their beauty; and when we look at them through a microscope, we see that there is not only beauty, but a great variety of beauty in them, as there is in all the other works of God.
Snow-flakes clusters of crystals.
The power of God seen in them.
Perhaps you have sometimes seen large crystals of quartz or other minerals, and you have admired them because they are so smooth, and regular, and clear. Now every snow-flake is a bundle of little crystals as regular and beautiful as the crystals of quartz. There are millions of these crystals in the snow that you take up in your hand, and in the falling snow they are put together in all the varied forms that you see in the figures above. As I told you about the leaves and the flowers in Part First, so we see, when we examine the snow-flakes, the more we look into the works of God, the more beauty we shall find in them.
How easy it is for God to fill the air with falling crystals, and to pile them up thick on the ground! With a free hand he thus scatters beautiful things in the desolate winter as well as in the blooming summer, and his power is as much seen in the pure crystals of the snow-flake as in the delicate and beautiful structures of the leaf and the flower.
How beautiful is the scene when the snow has fallen gently without wind, and has covered the branches of trees and bushes! Look up into a tree thus covered. There the crystals lie, piledup, like tufts of cotton, out to the very tips of all the branches. Millions and millions of them are on every twig. How many must there be on the whole tree! And how many on all the trees and bushes, and over the whole surface of the ground!
How easily now can God destroy all these crystals! He can send a warm sun, the wind, or a rain, and they are dissolved and changed into water again. The earth’s winter robe, all made of pure white gems, is gone. But God can, whenever he will, turn the clouds above us again into crystals, and strew the earth with them as before.
Variety in the figures of frostwork.
The great variety of forms which water takes when it becomes solid is often seen on our windows in winter. The figures of the frostwork on them are, you know, almost endless in their variety. These figures are made up of little fine crystals, and these crystals are made out of the water as the cold turns it from a fluid into a solid. How it is that the little particles of water arrange themselves in these clusters of crystals, branching out on the glass in all sorts of shapes, we do not know. God makes them do so in a way that we can not understand. How little do most people think of the wonderful things he is doing before them continually! If they are told that God, with his cold, makes the moisture from their breath into beautiful crystals, they can hardly believe it, and yet they have seen these crystals in the delicate frostwork on their windows winter after winter all their lives.
The figures of this crystal frostwork are often like leaves and flowers, such as we sometimes see on vessels of silver, only much more delicate and beautiful. It is as if God would smile on us inthe very frosts of winter as he does in the flowers of summer. In these figures, made of the clustered crystals of the water from our breath, he teaches us, just as he does in the flowers, that he loves to make things beautiful for us to enjoy looking upon them.
Why ice is made lighter than water.
The ice, often so very thick, is all crystal. And how beautiful it is when it is formed from clear water in a still place! There is one thing very singular about ice which I must mention. You know that it is lighter than water, for it swims on the top of it instead of sinking in it. This is rather strange. One would suppose that when the fluid water changed into a solid, it would be heavier, because the particles stick tighter together then; but somehow, although they stick together much more tightly, they are farther apart than they were before. It is this that makes the ice lighter. If they were closer together, of course it would be heavier.
We do not understand how God has made this to be so, but we can understand what reason he had for it. It would be very bad to have ice heavier than water. If it were heavier, there would be a great deal of ice on the bottom of our rivers, and ponds, and lakes in the winter. Then it would take a long time for the warm weather to melt this covered-up ice, and in some places it would not all be melted before another winter came. This would make bad work, and every year it would become worse, for there would be additions from year to year to the ice that is not melted. As it is now, the ice is all cleared out of the way in most parts of the world in the early spring, because the sun and the warm rains get at it, and thus the earth becomes ready in a very short time for the summer.
Regions of perpetual ice and snow.
With us the ice and the snow bear rule but a part of the year, but there are regions in the far north where they are always present. No summer comes there to melt them. You have heard of the icebergs in the seas of those regions. These piles of ice often rise like mountains, and many a noble ship has been crushed by them.
There are mountains, too, in some parts of the world so high that winter ever rules on their summits. The ice and the snow are ever there glistening in the sun, even while in the valleys below the golden harvests are ripening in all their beauty.
Questions.—What is said about the difference between snow and water? What is snow? Is the snow all alike? What is said about the beauty of snow-flakes? What are snow-flakes? Give the comparison between them and other crystals. What is true of the flakes of snow just as it is of leaves and flowers? What is said about the abundance of the crystals of snow? Tell about the tree covered with snow. What is said about God’s destroying the crystals of the snow? What is the frostwork on the windows in winter? What is said about the figures in it? What is ice? What is there very singular about it? What would happen if ice were heavier than water? Tell about the regions where there are always ice and snow. What is true of some mountains?
Questions.—What is said about the difference between snow and water? What is snow? Is the snow all alike? What is said about the beauty of snow-flakes? What are snow-flakes? Give the comparison between them and other crystals. What is true of the flakes of snow just as it is of leaves and flowers? What is said about the abundance of the crystals of snow? Tell about the tree covered with snow. What is said about God’s destroying the crystals of the snow? What is the frostwork on the windows in winter? What is said about the figures in it? What is ice? What is there very singular about it? What would happen if ice were heavier than water? Tell about the regions where there are always ice and snow. What is true of some mountains?