hen a sudden thought struck
him. He slowed down, and as Bob caught up to him, said in a low voice:

"Tom's made a great run! Let him be the first to get there."

Bob nodded.

As the pace slowed down, Tom, his gait a little staggering, caught up
with the other two and passed them. He reached the tree first and looked
up.

"My kites!" he cried. "And I got the amateur record!" and he collapsed
on the ground at the foot of the tree, worn out but supremely happy.

With the approach of winter, kite-flying became less popular as a
sport, but two or three times a month Tom sent up one of his kites with
the meteorograph, and the observations were faithfully forwarded to
Osborne, whose original gift of the two kites had been the stimulus to
the Mississippi League of the Weather.

The first few flakes of snow turned the attention of the boys to an
entirely new line of weather observations. Many and many a time had the
boys noticed the strange shapes of snow-flakes, but without paying much
attention to them. On the first Saturday after the light snow-fall,
however, three different boys brought in rough drawings of star-like and
feather-like snow forms that they had noticed.

"I've been wondering," said Anton, thoughtfully, "what makes snow-flakes
take those shapes? Hail comes down in lumps, and rain-drops must be
round, because when you see the first heavy drops of a shower they make
round blobs on the ground with pointed splashes at the side."

"A snow-flake," the meteorologist replied, "is a collection of icy
crystals. If you could look at one under the microscope, Anton, you'd
see that every little projection that goes to make up the shape of the
flake, is a six-sided crystal. You've eaten barley-sugar from a string
some time, haven't you?"

"Sure!" said several of the boys, and one added, "Mother often makes
it."

"How does she make it?" queried the Forecaster.

"Melts up some sugar and water and, as when it begins to cool off, she
hangs a string in the middle of the pot and the sugar settles on that."

"It settles in regular shapes, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, those are crystals. When water cools into ice, boys, it does the
same thing. Haven't you sometimes seen, after a cold night, a lot of
needles shooting out from the sides from a puddle?"

"Yes, sir, often."

"Those are all six-sided crystals. Frost on the window pane is made in
the same way. All those designs that look like lace work or trees or
fern