8. Detail of spider’s web dew-laden. Observe the pearl-like strands.
Happy indeed are you, if you have enjoyed a stroll in an old-fashioned country flower garden in the early morning. No need to dwell upon its charms if you have enjoyed that pleasure, for you will long remember the refreshment and peace which came to you with the close companionship of the great pink, damask roses, their petals still heavy with the night dews; the tall, sentinel-like lilies, cool and fragrant, their cups filled with dewy nectar, which great blundering bees were eagerly plundering; clean-smelling phlox, waist-high, each velvet cluster moist and bent with its weight of dew. Then the beds of gray-green mignonette; and best of all, down in an out-of-the-way corner, a tangle of unobtrusive old-fashioned pinks, where you knelt and buried your face for a moment to inhale their spicy fragrance, and found them doubly sweet and satisfying after their drenching dew bath. While the beds of simples and humbler things, the sage and wormwood, with their silvery leaves heavy with dew, exhaled a pungent, aromatic odour as you brushed them in passing. For the dew had refreshed them and enhanced their dormant spiciness tenfold.
The phenomenon of the dew is simply explained, and well worthy of a short study as it is really a most important factor in nature’s laws. Simply explained, the dew is really an actual deposit of water from the atmosphere upon the surface of the earth, and is formed when the earth is sufficiently cooled during the night by radiation.
Upon a pleasant day during summer, especially if the sun shines brightly, much aqueous vapour or mist is held suspended in the air, and if the temperature at sunset falls below the dew point, that vapour can no longer be retained in suspension in the air, and falls to the earth. The dew is the vapour of the air. Sometimes it can readily be seen falling in a fine mist resembling rain. It is the humidity of the air deposited upon all surfaces of the earth with which it comes in contact. When the temperature falls below the dew point, or 32°, the dew then becomes converted into frost, and we have a deposit of hoar frost, instead of the dew. It has been remarked that horizontal and flat surfaces exposed to the dew receive a greater deposit than sheltered or oblique surfaces.
9. A dew-laden strawberry leaf with dew jewels set in each serration about the edges
10. Dew drop caught on vegetable hairs of mullein leaf
11. The sleeping caterpillar was a good subject and received a copious collection of dew