Meteorology
res on the glass of the bedroom window on a cold winter morning. Frost is a wonderful artist; during the night
s of ice on the green pasture; and the clear, slender blades seem
winter, that, when sheets of paper and plates of metal were laid out, all began to attract hoar-frost as soon as they had time to cool down to the temperature of the air. He was struck with the fact that, while the thermometer indicated 36 degrees of frost a few feet above the ground and 44 degrees of frost at the surface of the snow, there were only 8 degrees of frost at a point 3 inches below the surface of the snow. If he
ht; big plane-tree leaves may be found scattered over the place. You see little or no hoar-frost on the upper surface of the leaves. But turn up the surface next the earth, or the road, or the grass, and what do you see? You have only to handle the leaf in this way to be brightly astonished. A thick white coating of hoar-frost, as thick as a layer of snow, is on
th rose from its surface, and was arrested by the cold surface of the leaves. So cold was that surface that it froze the water-vapour when rising from t
hen the thermometer was as low as 51° in the shade. But during the night my thermometer on the grass registered 32°-the freezing point. On the evening of the sultry day I examined the soil at 10 o'clock. It was damp, and the grass round it was filmy moist. The leaves of the trees were crackling dry, and all above was void of moisture. The air became gradually chilly; and as gradually the moisture rose in height on the shrubs and lower branches of small trees. The moon shone bright, and the stars showed their clear, chilly