Part 26 (1/2)

Who, if he rise to station of command, Rises by open means; and there will stand On honourable terms, or else retire, And in himself possess his own desire; Who comprehends his trust, and to the saleness of aim; And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state: Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall, Like showers of manna, if they come at all

Wordsworth: ”The Happy Warrior”

THE SOLITARY REAPER

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overfloith the sound

No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in so ne'er was heard In spring-ti the silence of the seas A the farthest Hebrides

Will no one tell s?-- Perhaps the plaintive nu ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day?

Soain?

Whate'er the the; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listened, motionless and still; And, as Iafter it was heard no more

Wordsworth

CLOUDS, RAINS, AND RIVERS

Every occurrence in Nature is preceded by other occurrences which are its causes, and succeeded by others which are its effects The hu any natural occurrence alone, but takes pleasure in connecting every natural fact hat has gone before it, and hat is to come after it Thus, e enter upon the study of rivers, our interest will be greatly increased by taking into account, not only their actual appearances but also their causes and effects

Let us trace a river to its source Beginning where it e it backwards, we find it from time to time joined by tributaries which swell its waters The river, of course, becomes smaller as these tributaries are passed It shrinks first to a brook, then to a streaain divides itself into a nu in mere threads of water These constitute the source of the river, and are usually found a hills Thus, the Severn has its source in the Welsh Mountains; the Thames in the Cotswold Hills; the Rhine and the Rhone in the Alps; the Missouri in the Rocky Mountains; and the Amazon in the Andes of Peru

But it is quite plain, that we have not yet reached the real beginning of the rivers Whence do the earliest strea the mountains would prove to you that they are fed by rains In dry weather you would find the streams feeble, sometimes indeed quite dried up In eather you would see theeneral these streams lose themselves as little threads of water upon the hillsides; but so You s are also fed by rain, which has percolated through the rocks or soil, and which, through soht of day

But we cannot end here Whence comes the rain which forms the mountain streams? Observation enables you to answer the question Rain does not come from a clear sky It co you are acquainted with, which they resemble? You discover at once a likeness between them and the condensed steaine, a cloud is projected into the air Watch the cloud sharply: you notice that it first forms at a little distance from the top of the funnel Give close attention, and you will sometimes see a perfectly clear space between the funnel and the cloud Through that clear space the thing whichwhich at one moment is transparent and invisible, and at the next moment visible as a dense opaque cloud?

It is the _steam_ or _vapour of water_ from the boiler Within the boiler this steam is transparent and invisible; but to keep it in this invisible state a heat would be required as great as that within the boiler When the vapour les with the cold air above the hot funnel, it ceases to be vapour Every bit of steam shrinks, when chilled, to a much more minute particle of water The liquid particles thus produced for fineness, which floats in the air, and is called a _cloud_

Watch the cloud-banner froradually less dense It finally ether; and if you continue your observations, you will not fail to notice that the speed of its disappearance depends upon the character of the day In hu and lazily in the air; in dry weather it is rapidly licked up What has become of it? It has been reconverted into true invisible vapour

The _drier_ the air, and the _hotter_ the air, the greater is the amount of cloud which can be thus dissolved in it When the cloud first forreater than the air is able to radually with a larger mass of air, it is ether from the condition of a finely-divided liquid into that of transparent vapour or gas

Make the lid of a kettle air-tight, and permit the steam to issue from the spout; a cloud is for from the funnel of the locomotive To produce the cloud, in the case of the loco the water we first convert it into stea the steam we convert it into cloud Is there any fire in Nature which produces the clouds of our atmosphere? There is: the fire of the sun

When the sunbeams fall upon the earth, they heat it, and also the water which lies on its surface, whether it be in large bodies, such as seas or rivers, or in the foriven off in the form of aqueous vapour, just as invisible vapour passes off from a boiler when the water in it is heated by fire

This vapour les with the air in contact with the earth The vapour-charged air, being heated by the warhter, and rises It expands also, as it rises, because the pressure of the air above it becoht it attains

But an expanding body always becomes colder as the result of its expansion Thus the vapour-laden air is chilled by its expansion It is also chilled by coher air The consequence is that the invisible vapour which it contains is chilled, and forms into tiny water-drops, like the steam from a kettle or the funnel of the locomotive And so, as the air rises and becoathers into visiblewith a current of cold, dry air, and then clouds would be for process continue in either case until the water-drops beco air, they would fall to the earth as raindrops Rain is, therefore, but a further stage in the condensation of aqueous vapour caused by the chilling of the air

Mountains also assist in the forainst a mountain, it is tilted and flows up its side

The air expands as it rises, the vapour is chilled and becomes visible in the form of clouds, and if sufficiently chilled, it comes down to the earth in the for a river backwards, froth to the sun; for it is the sun that produces aqueous vapour, from which, as we have seen, clouds are formed, and it is from clouds that water falls to the earth to become the sources of rivers