iff OF CLOUDS, CHAP. 2. 4. 



regular shape. When they increase rapidly, 

 and become more irregular, with fleecy bases, 

 they will soon be cumulostrati, and are to 

 be considered as indicating variable or wet 

 weather: in this case they are lower down in 

 the air, and of denser appearance. In the 

 intervals of, and before showers, I have seen 

 them very large, and yet moving along in the 

 wind, like immense hemispheres of cloud, 

 dense in the middle, with silvery summits, and 

 constantly tending to become cumulostratus, 

 and to reproduce the Showers; which, when 

 they last long, are nourished by dark flocky 

 cumuli, entering into the raining nimbus from 

 below. See PI. V. Fig. 2. 



Some of these little Stackenclouds are not so 

 fleecy as the rest; they are more compact in form, 

 and, flying along rapidly between the Showers, 

 are considered as a foreboding of their return, 

 and are called, by the vulgar, water waggons. 

 The cumuli before keen March Showers of 

 Snow, with North and East winds, have that look 

 of transparency, and that definite though rugged 

 edge, described in another place, as happening 

 also to cumulostratus. Cumuli have sometimes 

 appeared as it were tuberculated, and, though 

 of their usual hemispherical sort of form, to be 



