The Treasures of the Snow.
It is to be presumed that the writer of the book of Job knew what he was about when he wrote the very suggestive question, "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" Who indeed has, from that far-off day to this, ever fully entered into the treasures of the snow? Who ever thinks, for instance, except in the most casual way, of the good which snow does to agriculture? The Italian peasants, it is true, who live in a land associated in our thoughts with summer and sunshine, where snows are infrequent and fleeting, quote their proverb with pleased and hopeful faces amid the discomforts which this wintry phenomenon brings to them, Multa neve, multa pane,—"Much snow, much bread." But who in a land of much snow ever thinks of the reason there is to value such a tender protection to the bosom of our ample mother earth? The chemists tell us that snow-water contains a greater amount of ammonia than an equal weight of rain-water, that these feathery flakes of snow sweep down from the chambers of heaven a great amount of available nitrogen which would otherwise be lost to the earth. The process, if we understand it, is an electrical one. The passage of this white meteor through the air causes the nitrogen and oxygen contained in the air to unite along its course and produce nitric acid. This acid is very favorable to vegetable growth. It is a very valuable form of food for plants. And who has ever entered into the treasures which in this way are prepared for our fields and forest among the winds of heaven? The same snow supplies the earth with moisture containing a large amount of carbonic acid, which penetrates into the soil, which, by the action of frost, has become disintegrated and reduced to fine tilth, and insinuates itself through every clod as the snow melts. But the snow acts not only as a fertilizer; it also performs the very useful service of keeping the earth warm. It is a bad conductor of heat. Where the surface of the ground is covered with snow, its temperature very rarely descends below the freezing point, even when the superincumbent air is fifteen or twenty degrees colder. In the old stories of Captain Smith's first adventures in Virginia, we are told that he and his men dug grave-like holes in the snow, and lay down in them and slept, without much discomfort, through the night. The writer of one of the Psalms of David had the true idea of it when, using a beautiful figure, he said: "The Lord giveth snow like wool." Wool is warm because among its fibres a great amount of air becomes entangled; and air is a poor conductor of heat. And as air is entangled among the crystals of snow, there is great appropriateness in the figure. And this, by the way, is only one instance in which the Bible, when speaking of the phenomena of nature, speaks the truth. The protective service of the snow, in preventing injury to plants, keeping their roots warm, and giving them an accumulated vigor for the growth of summer, has been amply illustrated. Where the snow falls early, and remains on the ground through the winter, the grass of the next season is usually abundant. When a heavy permanent snow melts away in the spring, a living picture of vegetation is usually revealed. And so in many ways, some of them very mysterious, the snow is performing a work in the economy of nature for which the farmer and gardener are not, it is to be feared, ever sufficiently grateful. In a quiet and unobtrusive way, it warms, and cherishes, and fertilizes, we know not how many acres of sward land and grain land. "Its crystals are all jewels, so rare that the handling wastes them; its bulk so vast as to make the sources of rivers; its tint so pure that artists despair of it; its fall so gentle that the grass bends not and yet is buried."—Oregonian.