So softly winnowed is the falling snow that it scarce bends the few grasses and dead plants that now appear above its surface. The kindly snow obliterates the torn and abraded scars of nature; but it not the less effectually reproduces the prints of her children. To the light the snow reveals the doings of the night. Does a mouse so much as cross, she leaves her delicate tracery on the white coverlet. Away from the homestead rabbits have crossed and recrossed the fields in a perfect maze. That ill-defined "pad" tracks a hare to the turnips. Pheasants and wood-pigeons have scratched for mast beneath the beeches, and we find red blood-drops along the fence. These are tracked to a colony of weasels in the old wall. Last night a piteous squeal might have been heard from the half-buried fence, and the little tragedy would be played out upon the snow. Five wild swans cleave the thin air far up, and fly off with outstretched necks. The tiny brown wren bids defiance to the weather; darting in and out of every hole and crevice, usually reappearing with the cocoon of some insect in its bill. These delicate footprints reproduce the long toes of the lark, and those are the tracks of the meadow pipit. The hedge-berries are almost gone; and here the redwing and fieldfare have run along the fence bottom in search of fallen fruit. Those larger tracks by the sheep troughs show that the hungry rooks have been scratching near, and the chatter of magpies comes from the fir-tree tops. Scattered pine cones betoken a flock of incessantly chattering crossbills; and once in the fir wood we caught a glimpse of the scarlet appendages of the rare Bohemian waxwing. The gaudily-coloured yellow-hammer shows well against the snow, and bathes its orange plumage in the feathered rain. How our British finches seem to enjoy the frost and snow! Certain it is that now their stores of food become scant; but then they throw in their lot with the sparrows of barn-door and rick-yard. The bright bachelor finch stands out from his pure setting, and the daws look black against the snow. "Tweet," "tweet," comes through the cold thin air, and is startling in its stillness; and now we may hear as well as see the flight of a flock of linnets and goldfinches. Here observe a tall, nodding thistle-head, its once dark green leaves shrivelled up and turned to grey, its purple flower-rays to russet brown. They contain ripened seeds. A goldfinch hangs to the under surface, and a rose-breasted linnet clings to the topmost spray. The two frail things are not unlike in form, though the goldfinch is by far the handsomer bird. His prettily-shaped beak is flesh-coloured, as are also his legs. His head has patches of scarlet, white, and black, each well defined and setting off the other. The breast and back are of varying tints of warm russet brown, and the feathers of the wing are picked out with orange. His tail is alternately elevated and depressed as he changes