One of the most interesting experiments, without apparatus, which you can make is in connection with the formation of hoar-frost, when there is no snow on the ground, in very cold weather. If it has been a bright, clear, sunny day in January, the effect can be better observed. Look over the garden, grass, and walks on the morning after the intense cold of the night; big plane-tree leaves may be found scattered over the place. You see little or no hoar-frost on the _upper_ surface of the leaves. But turn up the surface next the earth, or the road, or the grass, and what do you see? You have only to handle the leaf in this way to be brightly astonished. A thick white coating of hoar-frost, as thick as a layer of snow, is on the _under_ surface. If a number of leaves have been overlapping each other, there will be no coating of hoar-frost under the top leaves; but when you reach the lowest layer, next the bare ground, you will find the hoar-frost on the under surface of the leaves. Now that is positive proof that the hoar-frost has not fallen from the air, but has risen from the earth. The sun's heat on the previous day warmed the earth. This heat the earth retained till evening. As the air chilled, the water-vapour from the warmer earth rose from its surface, and was arrested by the cold surface of the leaves. So cold was that surface that it froze the water-vapour when rising from the earth, and formed hoar-frost in very large quantities. When this happens later on in the season, one may be almost sure of having rain in the forenoon.