Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SNOW. One of the first results of frost or freezing weather is snow, usually only a few flakes during the first days of early winter. These seem harmless enough, but the trackman of experience in a northern climate takes grave notice of these wintry messengers, and prepares for the long struggle. He well knows that however good his track may ride in late fall, it will be rough enough before spring and that he must stand by, day after day, through the long winter season and see it go from smooth to rough without power to prevent. He knows that these scattering snow flakes "a moment seen, then gone forever" are the forerunners of the deep snowfall, of the swirling drift of midwinter, and of the hard banks of sandy, icy snow that must be shoveled off and loosened with a pick "when the days begin to lengthen." Characteristics of Snow.—Snow is defined as "congealed aqueous vapor," which means that snow is the frozen dampness from the clouds. Any one who has traveled fast through a heavy, damp fog will remember how wet the front of his coat has been from the tiny drops of moisture. Such dampness falling from the clouds, freezing on its way down or just as it starts to fall, into clusters of little ice needles, is snow. Each flake of snow is made up of thousands of tiny, separate needles of ice, always placed together to form six sided shapes, which are of many different patterns, as may be seen by using a magnifying glass. Each of these wee ice crystals glitters brightly in the light, making the snowflake look white like snow, instead of likeclear ice. A snowflake is not made in the same' way as a hailstone. Hail is made up of rain drops, which are driven about among thunder clouds and upward into freezing air by hard-blowing, cold wind, and frozen into ice, or ice a...