1884.] on Bainhows. 461 



subsequently, the air being in a similar misty condition, the luminous 

 circle was well seen from another door, the lamp which produced it 

 standing on a table behind me. 



It is not, however, necessary to go to the Alps to witness this 

 singular phenomenon. Amid the heather of Hind Head I have had 

 erected a hut, to which I escape when my brain needs rest or my 

 muscles lack vigour. The hut has two doors, one opening to the 

 north and the other to the south, and in it we have been able to 

 occupy ourselves pleasantly and profitably during the recent misty 

 weather. Removing the shade from a small petroleum lamp, and 

 placing the lamp behind me, as I stood in either doorway, the 

 luminous circles surrounding my shadow on different nights were 

 very remarkable. Sometimes they were best to the north, and some- 

 times the reverse, the difference depending for the most part on the 

 direction of the wind. On Christmas night the atmosphere was 

 particularly good-natured. It was filled with true fog, through which, 

 however, descended palpably an extremely fine rain. Both to the 

 north and to the south of the hut the luminous circles were on this 

 occasion specially bright and well-defined. They were, as I have 

 said, swept through the fog far beyond its illuminated area, and it 

 was the darkness against which they were projected which enabled 

 them to shed so much apparent light. The " effective rays," therefore, 

 which entered the eye in this observation gave direction, but not 

 distance, so that the circles appeared to come from a portion of the 

 atmosphere which had nothing to do with their production. When 

 the lamp was taken out into the fog, the illumination of the medium 

 almost obliterated the halo. Once educated, the eye could trace it, 

 but it was toned down almost to vanishing. There is some advantage, 

 therefore, in possessing a hut, on a moor or on a mountain, having 

 doors which limit the area of fog illuminated. 



I have now to refer to another phenomenon which is but rarely 

 seen, and which I had an opportunity of witnessing on Christmas 

 Day. The mist and drizzle in the early morning had been very 

 dense ; a walk before breakfast caused my somewhat fluffy pilot dress 

 to be covered with minute water-globules, which, against the dark 

 background underneath, suggested the bloom of a plum. As the day 

 advanced, the south-eastern heaven became more luminous ; and the 

 pale disk of the sun was at length seen struggling through drifting 

 clouds. At ten o'clock the sun had become fairly victorious, the 

 heather was adorned by pendent drops, while certain branching 

 grasses, laden with liquid pearls, presented, in the sunlight, an appear- 

 ance of exquisite beauty. Walking across the common to the Portsmouth 

 road, my wife and I, on reaching it, turned our faces sunwards. The 

 smoke-like fog had vanished, but its disappearance was accompanied, 

 or perhaps caused, by the coalescence of its minuter particles into 

 little globules, visible where they caught the light at a proper angle, 

 but not otherwise. They followed every eddy of the air, upwards, 

 downwards, and from side to side. Their extreme mobility was well 



