RAIN AND SNOW 
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- 
Sringe. 
Circled by 
the rain. 
