126 ABBE— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS METEOROLOGIST. [April 20 



manac, without exception, he had ridiculed the whole subject, while 

 at the same time knowing that popular superstition and ignorance 

 would cause his almanac to sell. His own ideas as to such forecasts 

 were far above those of his readers, and honest inquiry in this 

 direction was always near his own heart. In the last years of his 

 life he thought he saw one rational connection between cold winters 

 in Europe and the foggy character of the preceding summers. This 

 led him to write a very conservative memoir dated at Passy, near 

 Paris, May, 1784. It was published in the Memoirs of the Man- 

 chester Society and I reproduce it from Writings of Benjamin Frank- 

 Hn (Sparks), Vol. VI, pp. 455-456, (Bigelow) Vol. Ill, p. 488, as 



follows : 



Meteorological Imaginations and Conjectures. 



Passy, May, 1784. 



There seems to be a region high in the air over all countries, where it is 

 always winter, where frost exists continually, since m the midst of summer, 

 on the surface of the earth, ice falls often from above, in the form of hail. 



Hailstones, of the great weight we sometimes find them, did not probably 

 acquire their magnitude before they began to descend. The air, being eight 

 "hundred times rarer than water, is unable to support it but in the shape of 

 vapor, a state in which its particles are separated. As soon as they are con- 

 densed by the cold of the upper regions, so as to form a drop, that drop 

 begins to fall. If it freezes into a grain of ice, that ice descends. In descend- 

 ing, both the drop of water and the grain of ice are augmented by particles 

 of the vapor they pass through in falling, and which they condense by cold- 

 ness, and attach to themselves. 



It is possible, that, in summer, much of what is rain when it arrives at 

 the surface of the earth, might have been snow when it began its descent; 

 but, being thawed in passing through the warm air near the surface, it is 

 changed from snow into rain. 



How immensely cold must be the original particle of hail, which forms 

 the centre of the future hailstone, since it is capable of communicating suffi- 

 cient cold, if I may so speak, to freeze all the mass of vapor condensed round 

 it, and form a lump of perhaps six or eight ounces in weight! 



When, in summer time, the sun is high, and continues long every day 

 above the horizon, his rays strike the earth more directly, and with longer 

 continuance, than in the winter; hence the surface is more heated, and to a 

 greater depth, by the effect of those rays. 



When rain falls on the heated earth, and soaks down into it, it carries 

 down with it a great part of the heat, which by that means descends still 

 deeper. 



The mass of earth, to the depth perhaps of thirty feet, being thus heated 

 to a certain degree, continues to retain its heat for some time. Thus the first 

 snows, that fall in the beginning of winter, seldom lie long on the surface, 



