Chemistry of the Four Seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; An Essay, Principally Concerning Natural Phenomena Admitting of Interpretation by Chemical Science, and Illustrating Passages of Scripture (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1846 Excerpt: ... the eye marveleth at the beauty of the whiteness thereof; and the heart is astonished at the raining of it." Fig. 62. Snow, thus eloquently and impressively described, very probably depends for its formation upon the gradual congelation of watery vapor in clouds amid the higher and colder regions of the air, where its capacity for heat is increased by expansion; the water thus becoming solidified, loses the support of the air, and the newly-formed crystaline snow-flakes, in obeying the attraction of gravitation, descend, and cover the earth with a mantle of spotless white. This perfectly conceals the lowly remnants of vegetation from our sight, but we have reason to be grateful for its presence; the chemist discovers that snow is solid water in loosely compacted crystaline flakes, the beautiful form of which may be readily determined by catching them on a piece of black cloth, or on the top of a black hat, and immediately examining them with a high magnifier; they will be found to present the regular figures as shown in the engraving; and these may be regarded as the framework or skeleton of the solid six-sided prism into which water is more compactly frozen to constitute hail. Like more massive ice, snow is a bad conductor of cold; it therefore protects seeds, bulbs and roots from the chilling winds that sweep over its surface, as effectually as the shield of ice protects the beings of the wave; in fact, vegetable productions are thus preserved from intense cold by snow flakes, as they would be by a fleece of wool. Thus in the beautiful and impressive language of Scripture, " He giveth snow like wool." This passage refers to the similarity between flakes of snow and fleeces of wool, in whiteness and lightness; and also to their similarity in power of prese...