78 
GREENLAND VOYAGE. 
26 ° to 28°; the barometer was at 29.60 inches ; 
the wind light and variable. On another occasion, 
when similar fringes were produced, showers of 
snow, consisting of prisms or needles, apparently of 
the same description as thoseformed on the rigging, 
were mixed or alternated with the fog. And pre¬ 
vious to this fog, we had constant showers of the 
same kind of snow, which had a similar effect on 
the atmosphere, giving rise to the same kind of 
clouds, as resulted from the fog productive of 
fringes. 
Hence, we may reasonably infer, that the for¬ 
mation of prismatic or needle-formed snow, is a 
progressive process, and similar to that by which 
fringes on the rigging of a ship are produced ; and 
that snow-crystals in general (as is intimated in 
the first volume of the Account of the Arctic 
Regions) are not produced by a sudden crystalli¬ 
zation, but are derived from a progressive and con¬ 
tinued attraction of aqueous particles in the air, 
capable, under the influence of some law not yet 
explained, of producing an endless variety of re¬ 
gular figures. It is probable, that the first two 
or three particles of vapour that are consolidated 
in contact, become the nucleus of a crystal, by 
which a regular arrangement of particles, as to the 
angles they form, are attracted; and that the ba¬ 
lancing or equalizing of these attractions, by the 
