FROST-PICTURES.
rro THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOH."J SIE,—The question of the vegetable forms (in the Spectator- of February 16th) assumed by crystallised water is a very in- teresting one. That water (our most valuable mineral) should take on the appearance of the members of the vegetable king- dom is a most suggestive fact. It has long been a dream of the evolutionist that the vegetable kingdom has evolved from the mineral, as he believes that the animal has evolved from the vegetable, and it may be that in the fairy figures on our window-panes we are witnessing, as it were, the efforts of Nature to effect this transformation. We are taught that the earth was once too hot to support the life of plants, but that after the surface had cooled, trees, shrubs, and mosses- sprang up. Whence did they come ? A frosted window-pane shows us the strange phenomenon of inorganic matter as- suming the shapes of ferns, and leaves, and fronds, and may perhaps represent to our eyes in miniature a process which went on on a large scale during the pre-vegetable era of our earth's history. This idea is as old as the Jewish Kabbala,. where we read, "The breath became a stone, the stone a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a man, the man a spirit, the spirit a God." Half-an-hour in a scientific library devoted to reading up the subject of Dendrites would, I think, bring to light some interesting information.—I am, Sir, &c.,
H. PERCY LEONARD.
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