​​   Exceptions occur when there are "rime-frosts," and also when days are misty. The word "rime" still persists in the Eastern Counties, and describes effects of transcendent loveliness. Occasions, whose rarity perhaps makes them the more appreciated, come when every twig, every grass blade, every fence, and the leaves of all evergreens are covered with a thin coating of ice in beautiful crystals - giving the landscape an appearance of fairy-like beauty, removed in a few minutes when there happens, as is not infrequently the case, to be a sudden change of wind to a warm quarter. Perhaps the sun breaks through the gloom while it is yet freezing, the warmth of his rays being sufficient to melt the hoar frost just on the spots where they fall. Wonderful mist effects are as a rule seen about the hour of sunrise, and are most obvious in a country of alternating river and heath, lowland and upland. In the fen and broad districts it is all mist, on the high and dry tablelands there is little or none, but where river valleys are diversified with plantations and "breaks" the conditions are altogether favourable. After a day of "empty pastures blind with rain" the sun sometimes rises over a bank of retreating black clouds. Its coming is presaged by chattering titmice in the orchards, sparrows preening their feathers or flitting about the hedgerows after the manner of wrens, and by the changing tints of a tiny cloudlet which is gradually transformed to a pool of gold in the grey sky above. On some of the low-lying fields the mist is near the ground; in plantations it may be hovering near the tree-tops in a bar of silvery sheen; or perhaps scattered about in tiny patches wherever there is a depression in the soil. Open spaces in the woodlands are mist-filled, there is none among the trees themselves. As the morning breezes creep through the copses, the mist is wreathed and twirled into all sorts of wonderous shapes. Two or three hours after sunrise the atmosphere is moderately clear, yet filled with a rich luminosity which tones down all sharpness from the landscape. Most of the mammals are hibernating almost to the end of the month, and some of them longer. Almost all the land molluscs are still asleep, and our English reptiles and amphibia in a state of suspended animation. But there is always the thrush, that true-born British minstrel who shares with us the dreary days of winter, never gives up hope, however dark the outlook, and with prophetic vision sees the coming of spring and its many delights when man perceives little but gloominess. ​​