of aerial ice, that
would be by the falling of water toward this earth; an icicle is of
course an expression of gravitation--and, if water melting from ice
should fall toward this earth, why not the ice itself fall before an
icicle could have time to form? Of course, in quasi-existence, where
everything is a paradox, one might argue that the water falls, but the
ice does not, because the ice is heavier--that is, in masses. That
notion, I think, belongs in a more advanced course than we are taking at
present.

Our expression upon icicles:

A vast field of aerial ice--it is inert to this earth's gravitation--but
by universal flux and variation, part of it sags closer to this earth,
and is susceptible to gravitation--by cohesion with the main mass, this
part does not fall, but water melting from it does fall, and forms
icicles--then, by various disturbances, this part sometimes falls in
fragments that are protrusive with icicles.

Of the ice that fell, some of it enclosing living frogs, at Dubuque,
Iowa, June 16, 1882, it is said (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1882)
that there were pieces from one to seventeen inches in circumference,
the largest weighing one pound and three-quarters--that upon some of
them were icicles half an inch in length. We emphasize that these
objects were not hailstones.

The only merger is that of knobby hailstones, or of large hailstones
with protuberances wrought by crystallization: but that is no merger
with terrestrial phenomena, and such formations are unaccountable to
orthodoxy; or it is incredible that hail could so crystallize--not
forming by accretion--in the fall of a few seconds. For an account of
such hailstones, see _Nature_, 61-594. Note the size--"some of them the
size of turkeys' eggs."

It is our expression that sometimes the icicles themselves have fallen,
as if by concussion, or as if something had swept against the under side
of an aerial ice floe, detaching its papillations.

_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1889:

That, at Oswego, N.Y., June 11, 1889, according to the Turin (N.Y.)
_Leader_, there fell, in a thunderstorm, pieces of ice that "resembled
the fragments of icicles."

_Monthly Weather Review_, 29-506:

That on Florence Island, St. Lawrence River, Aug. 8, 1901, with ordinary
hail, fell pieces of ice "formed like icicles, the size and shape of
lead pencils that had been cut into sections about three-eighths of an
inch in length."

So our data of the Su