Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/106

98 term derived from a sheep to denote this structure. We often call it "wool-pack," the Germans dub these cloudlets "schafschen," while the Italians talk of "El ciel pecorello," all of which contain the same idea of something fleecy.

In another allied form we get a flock of cloudlets without a characteristic fleecy look, and then there is the familiar appearance of what is called "mackerel-sky" or "mackerel-scales," and also the less well-known forms, "the salmon" and "the hake." I am sorry that I cannot show a photograph or even a good drawing of these clouds (as they are not common), and their forms are not easy to delineate.



Fig. 2.—Fleecy Cloud, near Falkland Islands.

To those who know this kind of sky it is, however, easy to see how the forms have suggested the idea of fishes to people who dealt much in fish.

The explanation of the origin of fleecy clouds has not yet been altogether discovered. There is, however, no doubt that they are formed somehow by the action of two currents of air, moving either at different speeds, or in different directions one above the other, on a thin sheet of cloud that lies between them. Sand is often blown into ridges transverse to the wind like waves of the sea, and we can reproduce the structure of fleecy clouds in an extraordinary manner by making