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Much the same effect is given where glass is powdered, and for the same reason. As the snowflakes accumulate layer on layer they imbed air between them, so that when the material falls in a feathery shape say to the depth of a foot more than nine tenths of the mass is taken up by the air-containing spaces.
A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple shade fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The little brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things move. Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious full heart within.
Great clusters of magnificent orange-tinted orchids gleamed like galaxies of golden stars between the mangrove trunks at frequent intervals; clumps of feathery bamboo swayed gently in the soft warm breeze; the dense background of bush displayed every conceivable tint of foliage, from brilliant gold to deepest purple bronze; and magnificent forest trees towered in stately majesty over all, rearing their superb heads a hundred and fifty feet into the intense blue of the cloudless sky; while everywhere, over bush and tree and withered stump, blazed in thousands the trailing blossoms of brilliant-hued climbing plants that loaded the air to intoxication with the sweetness of their mingled perfumes.
And the light grew, and a whispering wind sprung as I walked through the wood; and the fast-evaporating moisture was like a bloom on the feathery fronds and grass and rank herbage; but on the higher foliage it was like a faint iridescent mist a glory above the trees.
Nearer yet, and the coast line came into sight, fringed by the feathery cocoanut tree of the tropics, and marked by a long line of surf.
"Perhaps not quite as we used to understand the term," he said, seeming to speak half-reluctantly. "Oh, we were very extravagant and foolish," rejoined Daisy lightly. "I didn't mean quite in that way, Blake. You at least are past the age for such feathery nonsense, or should be. I was aeons and aeons ago."
It was wrapping deeper and deeper the white slopes of the mountains and piling feathery drifts against the windward sides of the sighing pines. Here and there a burdened branch creaked under its travail. Now and then the wind that drove the snow rose to a gusty whisper, and a stark limb scraped the eaves of the house with grating, lifeless fingers.
All around grew a mass of feathery ferns such as hide and nestle in cool places, and up to Robin's nostrils came the tender odor of the wild thyme, that loves the moist verges of running streams. Here, with his broad back against the rugged trunk of the willow tree, and half hidden by the soft ferns around him, sat a stout, brawny fellow, but no other man was there.
The steep slopes on which they grow allow almost every individual tree, with its peculiarities of form and color, to be seen like an audience on seats rising above one another the blue-green, sharply tapered spires of the Menzies spruce, the warm yellow-green Mertens spruce with their finger-like tops all pointing in the same direction, or drooping gracefully like leaves of grass, and the airy, feathery, brownish-green Alaska cedar.
The open door looked out pleasantly into the deep forest, where the waters of the cove, now at high tide, could be seen glittering through the trees. Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the feathery ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in ruffling wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting of fallen pine needles.
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