Sky Phenomena in the Upper Forties 



W. H. TUKE 

 Principal of High School and Mining Institute, Haileybury, Ontario 



In "Modern Painters," written almost eighty years ago, John 

 Ruskin complained of the lack of interest in sky phenomena. 

 "It is a strange thing," he wrote, "how little in general people 

 know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature 

 has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole 

 and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in 

 any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least 

 attend to her." Even with such prophets as Ruskin to sing the 

 beauties of this temple of God's great Out-of-Doors, can we say 

 that after three-quarters of a century people in general pay any 

 more or even as much attention as they did in his day? The 

 ever-increasing murk of smoke and fog that hovers above our 

 cities ; the growing brilliancy of artificial lights by night ; and the 

 tendency to seek our pleasures indoors, combine to shut us off 

 from much that delighted and inspired alike the shepherds on 

 far-off Syrian hills and the restless aborigines of our own continent: 

 so much so that our much-tutored minds no longer "see God in 

 clouds or hear Him in the wind." 



It is natural, too, that even the enthusiastic Nature student 

 should more often devote his time and interest to the living 

 objects of creation rather than to inanimate things. Life in all 

 its forms, must always possess greater interest for us than non- 

 living things. There is a satisfaction, too, in the definiteness 

 that may be attained in investigating specimens that may be 

 captured, and handled, that is lacking in the study of the sky. 

 The latter is necessarily illusory. We can not even define it 

 exactly. Just as a real-estate holding may be described as a 

 pyramid whose base is the area specified in the title-deeds, and 

 whose apex is the centre of the earth, so the sky is that infinite 

 frustrum of a cone whose smaller end is bounded by our visible 

 horizon. Foreground of atmosphere, middle distance of solar 

 system, and background of unfathomed stellar space are super- 

 imposed with little to reveal to the eye which is which. Thus 



