RAIN AND SNOW 
99 
to respond to it so quickly as those on the lawns 
and fields out of town. This may be imagination 
with the observer, and yet it is well known that 
the rain which falls in the city is not the same 
rain as that which falls in the country, though 
both precipitations may come from the one 
cloud. City rain is fouled by passing through 
smoke, dust, and gases. It gathers sulphuric 
acid, which corrodes metal, paint, and iron, and 
certainly does not help vegetation. The coun- 
try rain is always purer because falling through 
a clearer air. 
Precipitation from the clouds usually takes 
the form of rain and hail in the summer, sleet 
in the spring, and snow or frozen ice-crystals in 
the winter. They are all easy to account for as 
regards their forms except hail, which is frozen 
rain perhaps, but a satisfactory explanation of 
how it is formed and frozen has not yet been 
offered. Hail falls in hot, sultry weather and 
with a thunder-storm. For that reason it is sus- 
pected that it has to do with electricity or is 
caused by it. It would seem at first blush as 
though those heavy drops of rain, which have 
been spoken of as the first to fall from the thun- 
der-cloud, were sometimes congealed to ice and 
united to other drops in the congealing proc- 
City vs. 
country 
rain, 
Hail. 
