i88o.i 
On WateY and Air. 
2 57 
flower. The heat had expended itself in reducing the ice 
to the liquid condition — simply in undoing the very work of 
crystallisation that you have seen exhibited before you on 
the screen. The particles of ice had been built together 
upon a certain plan. The sunbeam took those particles or 
molecules asunder, just reversing the process of crystallisa- 
tion. And round about those little spots I found a beautiful 
six-petalled flower of liquid. 
And now we will try to show you, in a more or less perfect 
form, some of those liquid flowers produced by the liquefac- 
tion of the ice. We will pass a beam from our eledtric light 
through the ice and focus these flowers, as they are formed, 
upon the screen. Observe those beautiful shapes that are now 
forming (Fig. 29). Do you see that every one of them has six 
Fig. 29. 
petals. That is the re-solution of the ice. The ice has 
stopped a portion of this beam, and that portion of the beam 
has expended itself in producing these beautiful forms. 
Some of them are beautifully crimped with fern-like 
crimpings. 
Well, crystals of snow form in this way in calm weather 
upon Alpine summits, and there they are gathered and col- 
lected year after year ; and there is a certain elevation 
where the quantity of snow that falls every year is in excess 
