CHAHLES WILLIAM ELIOT 
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THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
SHE LEADS IN BEAUTYAND INTEREST £ 
PRO ^ 
HOMES TO NATURE'S REALMS. 
EDWARD F. BIGELOW, MANAGING EDITOR! 
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Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Connecticut. 
Subscription, $1.50 a year Single copy, 15 cents 
Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909, at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3, 1897. 
Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, 
authorized on June 27 , 1918. 
Volume XIV FEBRUARY. 1922 Number 9 
The Beauty and Interests ot Snow Crystals. 
BY W. A. BENTLEY, JERICHO, VERMONT. 
My photographic studies of snow 
crystals and water forms have been 
pursued over a period of thirty-five 
years. The many illustrated articles 
about them by myself and others have 
spread their fame until their marvelous 
beauty has become almost common 
knowledge. Recently the Bray Studios, 
New York, have made a lovely moving 
picture of them — Goldwyn Bray Picto- 
graph No. 7001, entitled “Mysteries of 
Snow,” released over the Goldwyn cir- 
cuit — and this will enable millions of 
people to enjoy them. All those who 
wish to see this picture should request 
the managers of movie houses to get it. 
Each winter during all these thirty- 
five years the compelling lure of the 
beautiful “snow stars” from cloudland 
has been irresistible. I am always 
“watching out” for favorable snowfalls, 
and when such come business, pleasure, 
grief, cold, hunger, all else are neg- 
lected or forgotten in the search for 
these marvelous gems from on high. 
From one hundred to three hundred 
and thirty-five have been photographed 
each winter except during the unfavor- 
able one of 1913-1914, making a total 
of thirty-eight hundred and fifty to date 
with no two alike. The last three win- 
ters have been unusually favorable. 
My success in this work is due no 
doubt in part to long experience hut 
also in no small degree to favorable 
location (Northern Vermont) near the 
general winter storm paths. It is quite 
possible that the snows here are un- 
usually rich in perfect and beautiful 
snowflakes. Of course only a part of 
all snowfalls furnishes perfect forms. 
Snowfalls from the western segments 
of general storms, or those occurring 
between two closely lying “lows” (low 
barometer), contain the most of the 
beautiful crystals. 
Snow crystal photomicrography is 
wholly unlike any other photographic 
work. A microscope and camera 
coupled together form the main appa- 
ratus. The lenses used are microscope 
objectives — three inch, three-quarters 
inch and one-half inch — giving from 
eight to sixty diameters magnifi- 
cation (sixty-four to thirty-six hundred 
times). So rapidly do snowflakes evap- 
orate when separated, even during in- 
tense cold, that it is always a race be- 
tween the photographer and evapora- 
tion, and hence the utmost haste is im- 
Copyright 1922 by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 
