THE CLOUDS 93 



heavy layers are occasionally shot with lambent light- 

 ning, the more susceptible portion of humanity looks 

 fearfully at them as if they were the breeding-place 

 of heaven's artillery, and does not pause to ascertain 

 whether there be any ground for apprehension. 



But it is when they overspread the sky by day or 

 by night that they exercise the profoundest influence 

 upon mankind, or, indeed, the animal kingdom gene- 

 rally. An overcast day, whether in summer or winter, 

 affects us more than we imagine, or, if we did, would 

 care to admit. It is true that this disconcerting 

 phenomenon is sometimes due to what is known as 

 a high fog, generally in summer producing a dark 

 day; but in any case its effect is the same. It is, 

 then, hard to realize that only a few thousand feet 

 above our heads there is brilliant sunshine, and that 

 the hiding of the glorious light is only temporary. 

 Undoubtedly this overspreading of the sky with a 

 pall or pallium of cloud is an important factor in 

 weather-breeding ; but we unscientific folk do not 

 reason about that, we only feel, and if any one were 

 to reason learnedly upon it to us, the probability is 

 that we should listen listlessly, and, shrugging our 

 shoulders discontentedly, wish disconsolately that it 

 would clear up. 



Sometimes, indeed, the stratus breeds a feeling of 

 positive terror. I remember very vividly on one 

 occasion, when becalmed in mid- Atlantic on a night 

 in January, homeward bound from the Gulf of Mexico, 

 a great sheet of stratus thus overspread the sky. 

 It crept across from east to west, gradually hiding 

 the blue vault, with its myriad points of light, until 

 we were wrapped in what I could only think was 



