28 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Mists and 
Joys. 
tary flash upon the scene. The swirl and the 
swish of the elements, especially on the sea or 
on the plains, the sublimity of the tempest, ap- 
peal to us perhaps; but our eyes are almost 
useless. Nothing so darkens the earth as night 
and rain clouds under a moonless sky. 
It is, apparently, a very different light that 
we see when the clouds are not above us, but 
around us. A mist or fog is merely a cloud 
formed close to the ground, and is not different 
from the cloud that is about one at times on a 
mountain-top, except that the fog appears to 
be more luminous and to have more color. 
Doubtless something of this appearance is due 
to the thinness of the bank. It generally forms 
with a clear sky overhead, and is sometimes not 
higher above the earth than a honse-top, though 
it is often a hundred or more feet in thickness. 
When the bank is shallow we are surrounded by 
diffused and refracted light, and an upward 
glance in the direction of the sun shows us a 
white light seen as through alabaster. This 
same light is sometimes seen in the early morn- 
ing illuminating the whole landscape when the 
fog has lifted a thousand or more feet above the 
earth and is spread out into a thin, gauze-like 
sheet. The thinness of the sheet prevents ob- 
