It is not necessary, however, to send up a kite or a balloon to 

 prove this. If your home is among mountains, or even among 

 high hills, you can prove it for yourself ; for often, in the late 

 autumn, when it rains where you live on the lower ground, it 

 snows upon the hill tops, so that when the clouds have cleared 

 away the surface of the uplands is robed in white (Fig. 4). In 

 the springtime, or in the winter during a thaw, people living among 

 these highlands often start out in sleighs on a journey to town, 

 which is in the valley, and before they reach the valley their horses 

 are obliged to drag the sleigh over bare ground. It is so much 



^ipiiM^^i 



4. — A mountain luhitened by snoiv on the top^ while there is no snow at the 



base. 



warmer on the lower ground that the snow melts away much 

 more quickly than it does among the hills. 



The difference in temperature is on the average about one 

 degree for every three hundred feet, so that a hill-top rising 

 twelve hundred feet above a valley would have an average tem- 

 perature about four degrees lower than the valley. Now some 

 mountains, even in New York, rise thousands of feet above the 

 surrounding countr3^ They rise high into the regions of cold 

 air, so that they are often covered with snow long before any 

 snow has fallen on the lowlands ; and the snow remains upon 

 them long after it has disappeared from the lower country. 

 Have 3^ou ever seen such a snow-capped hill or mountain ? Here 

 is a picture of one (Fig. 4). 



Some mountains are so lofty that it never rains upon them, but 

 snows instead ; and they are never free from snow, even in mid- 



