Yesterday morning a remarkably fine fall of snow-stars took place over many parts of London. The crystals were larger and more perfectly formed than is commonly the case in our latitudes, where the conditions requisite for the formation of these beautiful objects are less perfectly fulfilled than in more northerly231 regions. Many forms were to be noticed which the researches of Scoresby, Glaisher, and Lowe have shown to be somewhat uncommon.

Some of my readers will perhaps be surprised to learn that no less than 1,000 different kinds of snow-crystals have been noticed by the observers named above, and that a large proportion of them have been figured and described. The patterns are of wonderful beauty. A strange circumstance connected with these objects is the fact that for the most part they are found, on a close examination, to be formed of minute coloured crystals—some red, some green, others blue or purple. In fact, all the colours of the rainbow are to be seen in the delicate tracery of these fine hexagonal stars. So that in the perfect whiteness of the driven snow we have an illustration of the well-known fact that the colours of the rainbow combine to form the purest white. For the common snow-flake is formed of a large number of such tiny crystals as were falling yesterday; though their beauty is destroyed in the snow-flake, through the effects of collision and partial melting. It may not be very commonly known that ordinary ice, also, is composed of a combination of crystals presenting all the regular............