WARMTH OF SNOW IN ARCTIC LATITUDES.
The first warm Snows of August and September (says Dr. Kane), falling on a thickly-bleached carpet of grasses, heaths, and willows, enshrine the flowery growths which nestle round them in a non-conducting air chamber; and as each successive snow increases the thickness of the cover, we have, before the intense cold of winter sets in, a light cellular bed covered by drift, seven, eight, or ten feet deep, in which the plant retains its vitality. Dr. Kane has proved by experiments that the conducting power of the snow is proportioned to its compression by winds, rains, drifts, and congelation. The drifts that accumulate during nine months of the year are dispersed in well-defined layers of different density. We have first the warm cellular snows of fall, which surround the plant; next the finely-impacted snow-dust of winter; and above these the later humid deposits of spring. In the earlier summer, in the inclined slopes that face the sun, as the upper snow is melted and sinks upon the more compact layer below it is to a great extent arrested, and runs off like rain from a slope of clay. The plant reposes thus in its cellular bed, safe from the rush of waters, and protected from the nightly frosts by the icy roof above it.