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Handbook of Nature-Study 



Fog on Mount Tamalpais, California, 

 Photo by G. K. Gilbert. 



WATER FORMS 



Teacher's Story 



Water, in its various changing forms, is an example of another over- 

 worked miracle so common that we fail to see the miraculous in it. We 

 cultivate the imagination of our children by tales of the Prince who 

 became invisible when he put on his cap of darkness, and who made far 

 journeys through the air on his magic carpet. And yet no cap of darkness 

 ever wrought more astonishing disappearances than occur when this most 

 common of our earth's elements disappears from under our very eyes, dis- 

 solving into thin air. We cloak the miracle by saying "water evaporates," 

 but think once of the travels of one of these drops of water in its invisible 

 cap! It may be a drop caught and clogged in a towel hung on the line 

 after washing, but as soon as it dons its magic cap, it flies off in the atmos- 

 phere invisible to our eyes ; and the next time any of its parts are evident to 

 our senses, they may occur as a portion of the white masses of cloud sailing 

 across the blue sky, the cloud which Shelley impersonates: 



"I am the daughter of Earth and Water, 

 And the nursling of the Sky; 

 I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; 

 I change, but I cannot die." 



We have, however, learned the mysterious key-word which brings back 

 the vapor spirit to our sight and touch. This word is "cold." For if our 

 drop of water, in its cap of darkness, meets in its travels an object which is 



