ologist. It is not alone in this : memory and Summer 

 imagination are alike stirred by the names of Clouds, 

 the three other of the four main divisions of 

 Cloud — the Cumulus, the Stratus, the Nimbus. 

 From the grey and purple of earthward 

 nimbus to the salmon-pink bastions of the 

 towering cumuli, those unloosened mountains 

 of the middle air, those shifting frontiers of 

 the untravelled lands of heaven, and thence to 

 the dazzling whiteness of the last frozen pin- 

 nacles of cirrus, all loveliness of colour may be 

 found. Neither brush of painter nor word of 

 poet can emulate those apparitions of gold and 

 scarlet, of purple and emerald, of opal and 

 saffron and rose. There every shade of dove- 

 brown and willow-grey, every subterfuge of 

 shadow and shine, can be seen. 



The cloud-lover will know that these four 

 great divisions are but terms of convenience. 

 There are intervening children of beauty. 

 Betwixt the earth-held, far-reaching nimbus 

 and the climbing cumulus, whose forehead is 

 so often bathed in the rarest fires of sunset, is 

 the cumulo-nimbus. Between the cumulus 

 and the stratus, whose habitual grey robe can 

 be so swiftly made radiant in yellow and 

 orange and burning reds, is the strato-cumulus : 

 a sombre clan in the upper wilderness, heavy 

 with brooding rains, moving in dark folds, less 



175 



