111. Clear prism-like branches
112. Solid type. Probably travelled a long distance
113. Low altitude crystal. Usually feathery and light in construction.
The conversion of liquid water through freezing into a solid crystalline state is certainly a most interesting process, as well as a mysterious one. There are many more difficulties to be encountered by crystal photographers in the study of ice formation, and its minute detail, than in that of either the snow or frost. Still many instructive and very interesting experiments have been made and facts obtained relating to the formation of the ice, and it has recently been possible to secure a valuable set of photographs which are wonderfully interesting, inasmuch as they serve to show the singular formation and development of ice crystal structure from start to finish.
Ice and water are so optically alike, that the formation of these ice crystals cannot be clearly detected without the aid of a microscope. These ethereal ice flowers are extremely frail and thin, less than one one-hundredth of an inch in thickness; and they vary from just a mere microscopic speck, to one-third of an inch or so in tabular diameter.
Generally every freezing body of water contains these beautiful ice crystals; myriads of tiny transparent ice flowers which assume distinct types and groups, more or less symmetrical. In order to watch the growth and development of these ice crystals which build up in such quantities on the surface of pond, river and brook, and which go, as a whole, to form solid ice, certain artificial conditions of light are necessary. These may be simply furnished by using a small mirror placed in a horizontal position beneath the surface of the water which is in process of freezing. Or, if one wishes to make an interesting study of the strange phenomena within doors, it may be quite possible to do so by simply placing water in a pail, and in the bottom of the pail, beneath the water, a mirror in a horizontal position. Of course the water should be kept in a cold room where it will freeze, or beneath an open window. The mirror affords the necessary white background, and in this manner ice in process of freezing may be plainly viewed from its first germ growth to the finished ice crystal.
