lost stock, to drive the survivors home and save the skins of the drowned. New fences have everywhere to be formed, and new houses erected; to save which from a like disaster, the settler places them on a raised platform, supported by pillars made of the trunks of trees. “The lands must be ploughed anew; and if the season is not too far advanced, a crop of corn and potatoes may yet be raised. But the rich prospects of the planter are blasted. The traveller is impeded in his journey, the creeks and smaller streams having broken up their banks in a degree proportionate to their size. A bank of sand, which seems firm and secure, suddenly gives way beneath the traveller’s horse, and the next moment the animal has sunk in the quicksand, either to the chest in front, or to the crupper behind, leaving its master in a situation not to be envied.”
CHAPTER III.
various forms op clouds—the cirrus, or curl-cloud—the cumulus, or stacken-cloud—the stratus, or fall-cloud—the cirro-cumulus, or sonder-cloud—the cirro-stratus, or wane-cloud—the cumulo-stratus, or twain-cloud—the nimbus, or rain-cloud—arrangement of rain-clouds—appearances of a distant shower—scud—cause of rain—formation of clouds—mists—heights of clouds—appearance of the sky above the clouds.
Many persons are apt to suppose that the clouds are among the most fitful and irregular appearances in the world; fleeting and unstable in their nature, uncertain in their forms, apparently subject to no fixed laws, and obedient neither to times nor seasons. Attentive observers, however, have proved that the beauty and harmony which are everywhere found to prevail in nature when rightly understood, can also be traced, even in the clouds. Although very much still remains to be discovered respecting them, yet it is found that, like all the other natural productions, they admit of being arranged and classified. So obvious was this to
persons whose interest it is to observe the weather, that, long before scientific men had studied the subject, country people had noticed the different forms of clouds, and had learned to distinguish them by different names.
The first scientific man who made the clouds the object of his particular study, was Luke Howard, who, from an attentive consideration of their forms and appearances, found that they might all be arranged under three simple or primary forms, namely:—
1. The Cirrus—so called from its resemblance to a curled lock of hair. (Figures, 1, 2; page 77.)
2. The Cumulus, from the heaped appearance presented by the convex masses which form this cloud. (Figure 7.)