THE CLOUDS AND WAVES (Continued) 



IN closing the previous chapter I practically ex- 

 hausted the list of all the main cloud-forms, having 

 purposely left the work of the most important of 

 them, the nimbus or rain-cloud, until the last. And 

 in what I stated about its work for the Indian con- 

 tinent, the reader may see what it is doing on a 

 somewhat lesser scale for all the countries of the 

 world to which it has access. Where it cannot reach, 

 as in the Saharan desert and the awful solitudes of 

 Asia, the land is barren and must so remain. It 

 would be merely monotonous to adduce instances of 

 the rain-cloud's work in other parts of the world, 

 because the same thing happens continually, with a 

 few local differences due to the configuration of the 

 land. All that remains, therefore, is to note the way 

 in which the various forms of cloud are torn and 

 twisted and amalgamated by the stress of the wind, 

 or, in the absence of the wind, how they pile them- 

 selves up, sometimes until for days together they 

 seem to interpose a solid barrier between the surface 

 of the globe and the beauties of the clear ether above. 

 Very wonderful and awe-inspiring is the appearance 

 of the clouds before the commencement of the westerly 

 gale in the North or South Atlantic Ocean, let us 



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