A SHOWER OF SNOW-CRYSTALS. 231 



regions. Many forms were to be noticed which the 

 researches of Scoresby, Grlaisher, and Lowe have shown 

 to be somewhat uncommon. 



Some of my readers will perhaps be surprised to 

 learn that no less than 1,000 different kinds of snow- 

 crystals have been noticed by the observers named 

 above, and that a large proportion of them have been 

 figured and described. The patterns are of wonderful 

 beauty. A strange circumstance connected with these 

 objects is the fact that for the most part they are found, 

 on a close examination, to be formed of minute 

 coloured crystals some red, some green, others blue 

 or purple. In fact, all the colours of the rainbow are 

 to be seen in the delicate tracery of these fine hex- 

 agonal stars. So that in the perfect whiteness of the 

 driven snow we have an illustration of the well-known 

 fact that the colours of the rainbow combine to form 

 the purest white. For the common snow-flake is formed 

 of a large number of such tiny crystals as were falling 

 yesterday ; though their beauty is destroyed in the 

 snow-flake, through the effects of collision and partial 

 melting. It may not be very commonly known that 

 ordinary ice, also, is composed of a combination of 

 crystals presenting all the regularity of formation seen 

 in the snow-crystals. This would scarcely be believed 

 by anyone who examined a rough mass of ice taken 

 from the surface of a frozen lake. Yet, if a slice be 

 cut from the mass and placed in the sun's light, or 

 before a fire, the beautiful phenonema called ice-flowers 

 make their appearance. ' A fairy seems to have 



