16 FEBRUARY 1895, Page 15

FROST-PICTURES.

go rxa ED/TOS OF THE .• SPECTATOR.") would be a great boon to some of your readers if one of their more scientific fellows would, through your -columns, explain something of those wonderful frost-pictures which we now have the opportunity of studying on our windows, and the laws which produce them. To the unin- structed they seem little short of miraculous. They repre- sent, faithfully, all kinds of ferns, mosses, and lichens in s,cenrate detail, and the larger forms of vegetation in minia- ture. It needs no imagination to see broad landscapes, tall forests of pines, natural and decorative leaves of the most -charming form and feeling. All kinds of sea-weeds prevail, too, in graceful arrangement and boundless profusion and -variety. It is as though some spirit of the air had thrown the remembrance of summer beauty on to the winter canvas. Is there some such subtle power of carrying these varied scenes from distant lands and seasons, and impressing them on the glass? Or is it the passing finger of the divine artist, who paints for our copying quiet breadths of evening sky, wondrous sunsets, and stormy cloud-effects, and who puts that tender, mysterious purple background into so many of our English landscapes P It would be interesting to know from some competent student what are the laws of this pheno- menon, whether the scenes depicted vary in different districts, why two panes of glass close together should yield such totally different designs and with quite a different touch, and -what repetition of detail is to be observed; and to be authori- tatively informed on many other points regarding these wonderful and most exquisite picturea—I am, Sir, &c., ELLIOT STOCK.