UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 117 



and falls so rapidly, that the warmth of the 

 lower atmosphere has not time to melt it, before 

 it reaches the ground. In summer, therefore, 

 snow may be formed at a great elevation, as 

 people who have ascended in balloons have more 

 than once witnessed, but it again becomes rain 

 in its descent ; whereas, hail, for the reason I 

 have given you, has been known to come down 

 in the hottest months of the year." 



I reminded him that he had not told me why 

 the moisture should sometimes freeze into flakes 

 of snow, and sometimes into the pretty little 

 round balls of hail. 



" I waited," he replied, " till you asked that 

 question ; for information is always best remem- 

 bered when the want of it is felt. If the parti- 

 cles of moisture in the atmosphere are small, and 

 if they are slowly congealed, they form them- 

 selves into flakes of snow, as I have already men- 

 tioned ; but when the moist vapour rapidly col- 

 lects into large drops of rain, and when these are 

 suddenly frozen, they become hail." 



" So that in fact," said I, " hailstones are-no- 

 thing more than little balls of ice." 



" They are ice, but not common transparent 

 ice," my uncle said, as he opened the window 

 and picked out a few hailstones from under the 

 snow ; " you see that they have an opaque white- 

 ness very different from the appearance of ice. 

 The upper regions of the air are not only always 



