RAIN AND SNOW 



95 



though it did not reach to the ground. As a 

 matter of fact, some precipitations never do 

 fall to earth. They are evaporated in mid-air 

 and returned to the sky. The travel of the 

 rain-fringe across the country, veiling and 

 often obscuring the hills and meadows, is most 

 interesting to watch as it shifts its form, color, 

 and density, and darkens the green of the 

 country over which it passes. It changes more 

 frequently than we think, and is sometimes 

 temporarily lost before our eyes, only to reap- 

 pear again with startling brilliancy when struck 

 by a chance sun-shaft. When the shower 

 comes our way, the clouds themselves seem to 

 undergo changes as soon as the rain begins to 

 fall from them. The lumpy roll breaks and 

 flattens in strata, or else it trails down in long, 

 shaggy points. The whole landscape darkens 

 as the shower approaches, the clouds become 

 obscured, the trees blurred, and presently we 

 are in the centre of a circle of rain through 

 which we can perhaps see not more than a few 

 hundred feet. When the shower is passing 

 away, everything is, of course, reversed. The 

 light increases, and often the vanishing rain 

 clouds struck by the sun, gleam as frost-white 

 as the castle-clouds of a summer afternoon. 



Travel of 

 the rain- 

 fringe. 



Circled <* 

 the rain. 



