If you happen to be in the country, direct your steps across the pasture lands, where the short thick grass is powdered heavily with the hoar frost, and do not fail to pause at the old, gray rail fence, leading into the cornfield, to study the fine effects, the magic work which the Frost Spirit has left there during the night. The withered brown shocks of corn, standing in suggestive, witch-like attitudes, scattered over the fields, each lance-like rustling blade tipped with a steely, glittering coat of frost; while between the leaning stacks gleam great golden pumpkins, as yet unharvested, each golden sphere gleaming through a bluish-white deposit of hoar frost, or frozen dew. [Illustration: 34a. Columnar hoar-frost crystals] [Illustration: 34b. Columnar hoar frost (tabular)] Unquestionably, James Whitcomb Riley had in mind a similar scene when he was inspired to pen the homely lines so often quoted: “When the frost is on the punkin, And the fodder’s in the shock.” The beauties and peculiarities of the hoar-frost crystals are a distinctly separate study in themselves, as they do not belong, nor are they classified with the heavier frosts of late and mid-winter, such as we find in the extreme cold weather deposited upon our window-panes and elsewhere. The hoar frost is in reality the dew particles or molecules of water in the air, which, when the temperature falls below 32°, freezes and collects, and thus forms a deposit of hoar frost upon nearly all surfaces which it encounters. Still another variety of hoar frost is that which forms mysteriously under some covering; occasionally we find it deposited upon a bit of wood which has lain under the snow; it forms upon the underside of the wood, or that part resting upon the ground, and is caused by the moisture of the earth, which collects, and which the temperature converts into crystals of hoar frost. Special and interesting examples of hoar-frost formations are given in the photographic illustrations, which, being taken with a camera having a microscopic attachment are, for the most part, largely magnified. The detail and formation of the hoar-frost crystal is most delicate, and well worthy of study, and the curious manner in which some of them are found, also the many different shapes which they assume, clearly shows that each formation is possessed of certain individuality of structural form peculiar to its environments, and the surrounding objects to which it may attach itself. [Illustration: 35. Linear window-pane frost. A common type] [Illustration: 36. Showing initials crudely scratched upon glass, which frost has elaborated] An especially interesting type of crystal is that which grows in queer needle-like layers, somewhat suggestive of tiny stalactite growths; this variety we frequently discover in gravelly or peaty soil, while it sometimes raises and supports upon its points large sections of earth and stones.