Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/664

 Good Hope. In reality the cloud is changing rapidly, forming and dissolving at one and the same time.

In forecasting weather, clouds have, as we all know, special significance. They are the true robes and garments of earth. The poet sings of hills clad in verdure, the mantle of tender green that the Earth puts on in the spring, and the splendid hues of her autumnal dress; but the garment which protects old Earth the year round from extreme temperatures is the cloud layer. Where there is little cloudiness the range of temperature is large, and where there is much cloudiness the temperature is very even.

So, while the clouds delight us, they are also active for our welfare. In never-ending procession they move—ragged ranks of fracto-nimbi jostled by frowning cumuli, tatterdemalion scud leading an army of mighty nimbi, the baleful funnel cloud, hovering and ill-omened, rolling strato-cumuli that lie far out on the flank; thus they pass, while in the calm above appear the cirri dainty and lacelike, or curling wisps of laughing cirro-stratus.



ERHAPS there has been more hasty theorizing about the child's moral characteristics than about any other of his attributes. The very fact that diametrically opposed views have been put forward is suggestive of this haste. By certain theologians and others, infancy has been painted in the blackest of moral colors. According to M. Compayré, it is a bachelor, La Bruyère, and a bishop, Dupanloup, who have said the worst things of children; and the parent or teacher who wants to see how bad this worst is may consult M. Compayré's account. On the other hand, Rousseau and those who think with him have invested the child with moral purity. According to Rousseau, the child comes from the Creator's hand a perfect bit of workmanship, which blundering man at once begins to mar. Children's freedom from human vices has been a common theme of the poet: their innocence was likened by M. About to the spotless snow of the Jungfrau. Others, as Wordsworth, have gone further and attributed to the child positive moral excellences, glimpses of a higher 