AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. EDITED BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE, GAIL HAMILTON, AND LUCY LARCOM. HE boys and, I am glad to say, the girls too — had enjoyed a few days of the very finest skating, when one night there came a fall of snow, and the next morning Lawrence, looking from his window, saw the pond covered with a shining white mantle. 66 "Never mind," said he; we can sweep places to skate on. A good skater don't care for a space larger than a parlor floor to practise on." So he went out that afternoon with a shovel and a broom to clear off a little of the snow. He was surprised to find a number of men on the pond before him. They had long chisel-shaped iron bars, with which they were cutting holes in the ice, about five paces apart, all over the pond. "Look here!" cried Lawrence, running up to one of them, "what is this for? You 're spoiling our skating." "Your skating is spoiled already," said the man; and click! click! his bar went through the ice again. “Our business would be spoiled too, if we did n't cut these holes." "I don't see how?" "I'll tell you how. This coating of snow prevents the ice from forming. Snow is warm; did you know it? A sheep covered up in a drift will live through a night that would freeze her to death if she was exposed to the weather. Just so, a heavy fall of snow is the best thing in the world to keep strawberries and other plants from winter-killing. It keeps Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICK NOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. |