THE ICE STORM OF JANUARY, 1881—POOLE. 297 
Art. [IX.—THE Ice Storm or JANUARY, 1881, By H.S. Poo.e, 
THE ice storm of January 24th, 1881, was so unusual for Nova 
Scotia, that it is, perhaps, worthy of note. . 
On Friday, three days before, an ordinary silver thaw covered 
the bushes with the well-known casing of ice that so attractively 
glistens in the morning sun, and where cracked refracts the bright 
rays into all the colours ‘of the rainbow. On the following day 
a mist with occasional showers of rain, freezing as it fell, added 
to the icy coating and bent the tops of trees with its weight. 
The,accumulation of ice on buildings, fences, telegraph posts 
and wires was then sufficiently heavy to cause remark, but the 
atmospheric conditions necessary for such an ice growth con- 
tinuing, the coating grew thicker, and increased with telling 
force on all slender trees and wide spread branches. 
On Monday the showers returned, and they seemed to sweep 
across the country with alternate bodies of colder air, at least it 
seemed so, for when driving along the country roads one was 
met at one moment by gusts of hail, and the next by rain. Roads 
that were traversed without difficulty in early morning became 
within a few hours so obstructed with bowed and broken trees 
as to be almost impassable. 
Having read of similar storms in Russia, the phenomena pro- 
duced were watched with more than ordinary interest, and 
especially, were the curious forms taken by the ice coating the 
telegraph wires. At first the wires appeared merely increased in 
size—the ice forming on the top of the wire and on the side ex- 
posed to the storm, which came from the north-east. The showers 
next formed icicles, which in their turn offered further surface 
for accretion. But the icicles did not long hang vertically from 
the wires, for the accumulations on the top overcoming the ad- 
hesion to the wire slowly turned round until they were under- 
neath, and the icicles made to take various angles, some rows 
being even reversed and vertical. On some sections other rows 
