A more specific reference for Boas and snow is in the Handbook Intro (pp. 25 -
26 in the original), where FB cites just four Eskimo items:
aput `snow on the ground'
qana `falling snow'
piqsirpoq `drifting snow'
qimuqsuq `a snowdrift'
B cites these simply as one among several examples of how different languages
assign lexical items to different partitions of the space of possible
meanings.
Emmon Bach