The water that goes up in these different ways has also different ways of getting down upon the earth again. That which is high up in the form of clouds comes down in different shapes. When cold air meets the clouds, and changes the water so finely divided in them into drops, it falls in rain. When the air is cold enough to freeze it, it falls in the shape of snow or hail.
Questions.—What is a cloud? Why does it not always rain when it is cloudy? What is the difference between mist and rain? Give the comparison between the rain and the gathering of water on a tumbler. What is said about the shapes of clouds? What about their colors at morning and evening? What is said about the heights of clouds? What about clouds around mountains? Tell about the shower on the Catskill Mountain. What is said about the moisture from your skin and lungs? Tell how the water is always moving and changing. What is said about water as a traveler? Tell in what different ways the water goes up in the air. In what different ways does it come down, and why?
CHAPTER XXI.
SNOW, FROST, AND ICE.
How different snow is from water! How white it is as it lies upon the earth like a winding-sheet, covering up the dead leaves and plants! How the wind that makes waves in the water heaps up the snow in drifts! The water slips from your hand as you grasp it, but the snow you can make into hard balls, or roll it up on the ground into larger ones to build snow forts. The snow lies quietly on the sides of hills and mountains, from which, the moment that it melts, it runs down into the valley below.
The different forms of the crystals of snow.
But, different as the snow is from water, it is nothing but frozen water. It is water made solid; and, as the water becomes solid up in the air before it falls, it forms itself into many different shapes. The snow seems to be all alike as you look at it as it falls. But it is not so. There is variety even here. The snow-flakes have various forms. We can see how different their shapes are if we look at them with a microscope, as they are here represented.
Snow-flakes are beautiful things to look at even with the naked eye. How light, and delicate, and feathery they are! When they are very large and the air is still, how slowly and steadily they fall! Let a few of them light upon your coat sleeve, where you can look at them, and you will admire their beauty; and when we look at them through a microscope, we see that there is not only beauty, but a great variety of beauty in them, as there is in all the other works of God.