Vapours. 33 
manner of oil. Though these hills have not the 
faintest pretensions to be compared with mountains, 
yet when the rainy clouds hang low they often strike 
the higher ridges, which from a distance appear 
blotted out entirely, and are then receiving a misty 
shower. 
Then there rise up sometimes thick masses of 
vapour which during the night have gathered over the 
brooks and water-meadows, the marshy places of the 
vale, and now come borne on the breeze rolling along 
the slopes; and, as these pass over the dew-pond, 
doubtless its colder water condenses that portion 
which draws down into the depression where it stands. 
In winter the vapours clinging about the clumps of 
beech freeze to the boughs, forming, not a rime merely, 
like that seen in the vale, but a kind of ice-casing, 
while icicles also depend underneath. Now, if a wind 
comes sweeping across the hill with sudden blast, 
these glittering appendages rattle together loudly, 
and there falls a hail of jagged icy fragments. When 
-one has seen the size and quantity of these, it. 
becomes more easy to understand the amount of 
water which an intangible vapour may carry with it 
to be condensed into the pond or congealed upon the 
tree. 
There is another such a pond half a mile or more 
from the earthwork in another direction, but also on 
a level, making two upon this high and exposed. 
down. Many others are scattered about—they have 
D 
