the water is divided into slender canals, cools at night by radiation, the water at the exits of the canals hardens into ice. This ice then assists the hardening of the adjacent particles of water, which also congeal before the soil itself has fallen to freezing-point, and before therefore the water can freeze fast to the particles of earth. The ice then extends in the direction of least resistance, that is, upwards. In this manner, one molecule of ice after another pushes its way out of the slender canals,—a process which also explains the thread-like structure of the frost-pillars. These push up with them, in their growth, the minute particles of earth which lie between their extremities, and which also are cooled by radiation and stick to the ice. They form a crust which itself protects the underlying soil against further radiation. This accounts for the fact that the soil on which the frost-pillars stand, far from being frozen, is so soft and wet that a thin cane may easily be stuck deep into it. That the ice needles really grow from below and force their way up out of the soil, is proved by the circumstance that in shady places, where they are not melted during the day and can therefore continue to grow for several nights in succession, several sharply defined thin layers of earthy particles may be distinguished in the pillars. Frost-pillars are also formed under a thin covering of snow, when the upper surface of this latter melts during the day-time. The water then penetrates into the lower layer of snow, and thence into the soil. The thin snow-covering freezes during the night, and the hardening process, as above described, proceeds on into the canals below ground."
So far as our experience goes, frost-pillars, as here described, are unknown in Europe. An English gentleman long resident in Virginia tells us, however, that they occur there, going by the local name of "frost-flowers."
Book recommended. Our quotation is from a short paper by Dr. Wagener, in Part 12 of the German Asiatic Transactions.
Shintō, which means literally "the Way of the Gods," is the name given to the mythology and vague ancestor and
