258 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



always to bring wet. This is when great expanses of 

 the sky are dappled thickly with fleecy cloudlets, 

 filmy rather than opaque. They pass quickly through 

 various changes in form, each cloudlet, as it were, 

 keeping time with its fellows; but they will keep 

 for some time their dappled look. This is a form 

 of cirrocumulus. 



For beauty these fleecy flocks of pale grey or white 

 are scarcely excelled by any cloud. Changing slightly 

 in appearance and packing closer together, they are 

 often rufied out into "mackerel back." Why these 

 clouds, that look not the least rainy, should so often 

 come shortly before a break in the weather, I cannot 

 say; I am sure they do. A short time after they 

 have gone the stars are hid completely by a pall of 

 cirrostratus cloud, spread from horizon to horizon 

 the dark, rainy form of cirrostratus and the night or 

 day grows soaking wet. As each of these distinct cloud 

 forms must have its meaning and its story, may it not 

 be worth watching them ? Suppose in the end we gam 

 from them no weather wisdom to speak of, the obser- 

 vation is yet not misspent, their beauty being so 

 wonderful. 



Ours remains largely a corn-growing neighbourhood. 

 Talk about the small importance of the English wheat 

 crop to-day falls on an unbelieving country ear. A 

 bare generation has passed since English people, with 

 one consent, recognised wheat as the event of all in 

 the farming year, a tradition old and sure as our his- 



