When, for example, a record of weather occurrences states that hail has fallen, this statement, unequivocal as it may seem to the layman, often raises a question in the mind of the meteorologist. For centuries people talked and wrote about hail before it occurred to men of science to inquire whether one and the same thing was always described under this name. The pursuit of this inquiry led to disconcerting results, one of them being the discovery that we do not now know, in many cases, what bygone weather observers meant when they made the entry “hail” in their records. There are at least three different kinds of icy lumps and pellets that fall from the sky, and they have all been called hail. What science now regards as true hail occurs only in connection with thunderstorms, and therefore chiefly in warm weather. It consists of balls or irregular lumps, each of which, on examination, is found to have an opaque snowlike center, surrounded by ice, which is often in alternately clear and opaque layers. The second class of icy particles takes the form of miniature snowballs, about the size of large shot or small peas. It falls in cold weather, often in conjunction with ordinary snow. Because it readily crumbles, English-speaking meteorologists have called it “soft hail”; but this name is inappropriate for the two cogent reasons that, though friable, it is not soft, and that it is not hail; hence this term is now giving way to the German name “graupel” (in which _au_ = _ow_ in “growl”). Lastly, little pellets or angular particles of clear ice sometimes fall in cold weather. These frozen drops, though fairly common, have, until recently, enjoyed the distinction of being anonymous, so far as the scientific world was concerned, while the general public called them various things, including “hail.” A few British authorities have tentatively styled this form of precipitation “ice rain,” a name which has, however, been otherwise applied. Finally, in the year 1916, the United States Weather Bureau took the bull by the horns and decreed that such ice particles should be called “sleet.” Although this decision of the Weather Bureau was arrived at only after an exhaustive overhauling of literature and much correspondence with philologists, scientific men, engineers, and others, it remains to be seen whether it will eventually prevail throughout the English-speaking world. In England “sleet” nearly always means a mixture of snow and rain. On the other hand, a great many Americans have been in the habit of applying this term to the coating of smooth ice, due to rain in cold weather, which often breaks down the branches of trees, lays low miles of wires, and incidentally produces one of the most beautiful spectacles of American winters.