or MIST, a meteor, consisting of gross vapours, floating near the surface of the earth.

Mists, according to Lord Bacon, are imperfect condensations of the air, consisting of a large proportion of the air, and a small one of the aqueous vapour; and these happen in the winter, about the change of the weather from frost to thaw, or from thaw to frost; but in the summer, and in the spring, from the expansion of the dew.

If the vapours which are raised plentifully from the earth and waters, either by the solar or subterraneous heat, do at their first entrance into the atmosphere meet with cold enough to condense them to a considerable degree, their specific gravity is by that means increased, and so they will be stopped from ascending; and either return back in form of dew or of drizzling rain, or remain suspended some time in the form of a fog. Vapours may be seen on the high grounds as well as the low, but more especially about marshy places. They are easily dissipated by the wind, as also by the heat of the sun. They continue longest in the lowest grounds, because these places contain most moisture, and are least exposed to the action of the wind.

Hence we may easily conceive, that fogs are only low clouds, or clouds in the lowest region of the air; as clouds are no other than fogs raised on high. See CLOUD.

When fogs stick, then the vapours are mixed with sulphureous exhalations, which smell so. Objects viewed through fogs appear larger and more remote than through the common air. Mr Boyle observes, that upon the coast of Coromandel, and most maritime parts of the East Indies, there are, notwithstanding the heat of the climate, annual fogs so thick, as to occasion people of other nations who reside there, and even the more tender sort of the natives, to keep their houses close shut up.

Fogs are commonly strongly electrified, as appears