Summer persuaded of the great winds which may drive 

 Clouds, the as silent seeming stratus, some ten thousand 

 feet higher it may be, at the lightning speed 

 of the eagle. Between the stratus and cirrus 

 there are the cirro-cumulus and the cirro- 

 stratus. The former is in one form as 

 commonly welcome as beautiful, the familiar 

 * mackerel-sky,' harbinger of fair weather — in 

 another, it is the soft dappled sky that moon- 

 light will turn into the most poignant loveli- 

 ness, a wilderness of fleecy hillocks and 

 delicate traceries. The latter is that drift-ice 

 or broken-up snow-field enmassing which is so 

 familiar. Both march from horizon to horizon 

 in ordered majesty, though when they seem 

 like idle vapours motionlessly suspended along 

 the blue walls of heaven they are rustling their 

 sheaves of frost-fire armour, are soaring to 

 more than twenty thousand feet above the 

 earth, and are surging onward with impetuous 

 rush at the rate of from seventy to eighty 

 miles an hour. 



I have called them the children of beauty. 

 But these children of cloud are many. In 

 each division, in each subdivision, there is 

 again complex division. In a Gaelic story or 

 poem -saga they are called 'the Homeless 

 Clan.' It is a beautiful name. But they are 

 not homeless whom the great winds of the 



176 



