with sometimes a few feathers. They lay four 
or five eggs, of a dirty olive colour, marked with 
dusky spots. The young appear ugly and 
shapeless ; and the mother never deserts them 
until their long bill is firm enough to enable 
them to procure their food. The cock, while the 
hen is sitting, poises himself on his wings, some- 
times making a, whistling, and frequently a drum- 
ming, noise; and it is uncertain whether this 
noise is ventriloquous, or is produced by the mo- 
tion of the wings. Mr. White says, it happens 
always when the bird is descending, and his 
wings are violently agitated. Snipes feed on 
worms and insects which they find in the moist 
ground, and also on small snails, which they 
sometimes swallow whole. They usually have 
abundance of fat, which is not apt to cloy, and 
rarely disagrees with those that eat it ; and they 
are cooked like the woodcock, without extracting 
the entrails, and are every where esteemed for 
their delicious flavour. 
The great snipe, Scolopax major, is distin- 
guished from the common snipe by being about 
one-third larger, and by its fawn-coloured varie- 
gations above being smaller, and the brown ones 
below larger and more numerous. It is com- 
paratively rare in England, and occurs always 
alone and detached, and is sometimes called the 
solitary snipe. Some persons have supposed it 
to be not a distinct species, but merely an old 
and overgrown common snipe, changed in its 
plumage from age, and enlarged in its bulk from 
ceasing to breed. 
The Jack snipe or Judcock, Scolopax gall:nula, 
is nearly one-half smaller than the common 
snipe, and has but one black band on the head. 
Its neck is variegated with white, brown, and 
pale red; its scapulars are narrow, very long, 
brown, and margined with yellow; its tail is 
brown, and has tawny edges; and its legs are 
cinereous green. It frequents the same haunts 
and feeds on the same fare as the common snipe: 
but it is more rare, and lies so close as to incur 
the risk of being trodden on before it will rise, 
so that it is very difficult to be found. It never 
flies far, and has a comparatively sluggish mo- 
tion. 
SNOW. Frozen vapour deposited in powdery 
globules or in flaky and spicular crystals from 
the atmosphere. It has the same relation to 
rain which hoar-frost has to dew or which ice 
has to water. It is supposed to be formed at no 
great height in the atmosphere, and while the 
vapour is collapsing into drops. ‘The powdery 
varieties, in particular, are believed to be formed 
near the surface of the earth; and they have a 
greater density than the flaky varieties, and fall 
more rapidly, and enclose a much smaller volume 
of gases within their cells and interstices, and pos- 
sess much less power to act usefully upon the soil 
and upon vegetation. The flaky and spicular va- 
rieties are very numerous, and, in most instances, 
have very beautiful crystalline forms. Some are 
SNOW. 
lamellar stelliform crystals ; some, lamellar regu- | 
lar hexagons; some, lamellar aggregations of 
hexagons; some, lamellar hexagons with pro- 
jecting radii or salient angles ; some, spheres or 
central lamellar plates with spinous processes ; 
some, six-sided prisms ; some, hexagonal pyra- 
mids ; and some, spicule with one or both ex- 
tremities fixed to the centre of a lamellar plate. 
The six-sided prisms are hard and firm and 
small, and appear to be formed at much higher 
elevations than the other kinds ; they constitute 
the chief bulk of the snow of very lofty alpine 
regions, and are there lifted and whirled and 
tossed by the winds in a similar manner to the 
light sands of an arid desert ; and they are com- 
monly accompanied in Britain with some of the 
lamellar varieties, which are believed to inter- 
cept them and mix with them in the lower part 
of their descent. The wheeled and stellate and 
spinose and compoundly hexagonal varieties con- | 
stitute the largest flakes and the softest snowy 
masses, and fall in calm weather, in low districts, _ 
Flakes 
and with a slow and sluggish motion. 
which are nine times less dense, or nine times more 
expanded then water, fall, on the average, three | 
times less slowly ; and the largest flakes are com- 
monly formed in a frost so mild as to make the | 
crystals soft and humid, and to allow them to 
cohere somewhat in the manner of the rays of 
feathers. All flaky snow, as soon as it has fallen, 
begins to consolidate into increasingly denser 
conditions ; and it owes both this power of self- 
condensation and the capacity of great cohesion 
under mechanical pressure to the acicular tex- 
ture of its crystals, and to the presence of a cer- 
tain degree of enclosed and coherent moisture 
which afterwards freezes. Sheets of snow on the 
ground are well known to reflect beautiful pink 
and blue tints under certain angles of sun- | 
shine, and to fling back so much light as to be | 
painful to the eyes by day and to guide the tra- | 
veller in the absence of moonshine at night. 
Snow, especially when newly fallen, contains a 
comparatively large impregnation of carbonic 
acid, ammonia, and other atmospheric gases ; 
and yet, when caught in falling, or when lifted 
without permitting any possibility of contami- 
nation from the soil or from smokes or exhala- 
tions, it yields as pure water as mountain rain, 
—the purest which can be obtained from natural 
sources, 
Snow is an exceedingly reluctant conductor of 
heat ; and, when forming a layer of two or three 
inches, or even less, upon the soil, it prevents 
the internal heat of the earth from radiating 
into the atmosphere, and preserves the surface 
of the land from congelation by subsequent frost ; 
and it therefore ameliorates the soil in winter, 
protects the life of the natural grasses and her- 
bage plants during the long and rigorous frosts 
of high latitudes, shelters the cereal grasses and 
other field-plants of Britain so as to keep them 
safe in winter and make them rise vigorously in 
Sey 
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Bn 8 ~ 
I A RE I Fe es 
