Water supply of South Africa and facilities for the storage of it / compiled by John Croumbie Brown.

  • John Croumbie Brown
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Water supply of South Africa and facilities for the storage of it / compiled by John Croumbie Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue with which they are islanded. Speaking of the rain-clouds, Ruskin says, as I have stated, they differ not so much in their real nature from those of the central and uppermost region as in appearance, owing to their greater nearness. For the central clouds, and perhaps even the high cirri, deposit moisture, if not distinctly rain, as is sufficiently proved by the existence of snow on the highest peaks of the Himalaya; and when on any such mountains we are brought into close contact with the central clouds, we find them differing little from the ordinary rain-cloud of the plains, except by being slightly less dense and dark. And he adds in a foot-note :— I am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may extend; perhaps there are no mountains which rise altogether above storm. I have never been in a violent storm at a greater height than between 8000 and 9000 feet above the level of the sea. There the rain-cloud is exceeding light [in colour] compared with the ponderous darkness of the lower air: He speaks apparently of the greatest altitude of these clouds. The height at which the lowest clouds are formed varies with the latitude and the season, being generally greater in the warmer and less in the colder region. Schuckburgh, it is mentioned in the Philosophical Transactions for 1777 (p. 528), frequently observed clouds resting below the summit of Saleve, the height of which is 2831 feet. In Dr Alton's Meteorological Observations (p. 41), it is stated that in Cumberland, lat. 34°, Mr Crosshwaite, in the course of several years' observations, observed none lower than 2700, and none higher than 3150 feet. Lambert, in Berlin, lat. 52° 32', found, it appears from the Mem. Berlin, 1773 (p. 44), in the month of July, 1773, their height 7792 feet. Gentil, at Ponticherry, lat. 12°, observed some at the height of 10,240 feet. In the course of several years' observations in Cumberland by Mr Crosshwaite, the records of which are embodied in Dalton's Meteoro- logical Observations (p. 41), none were observed lower than 2700 feet, and none higher than 3150. But it is suggested that this country, being mountainous, clouds are probably lower than in other districts under the same latitude. At the Cape, when the clouds are at a higher level than the
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