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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



So complete was the illusion that a spahi 

 was sent to reconnoiter. When he had 

 reached a point where the undulations com- 

 menced, the horse's legs became so elongated 

 that both steed and rider seemed to be borne 

 up by a fantastic horse several yards high 

 disporting itself in the midst of the water that 

 appeared to submerge it. This illusion per- 

 sisted until a thick cloud intercepted the 

 sun's rays and the objects assumed their 

 natural shapes. 



(4) — Another mirage observed by M. 

 Bonnefont, was effected by a gentle breeze. 

 It became a source of amusement to the 

 French soldiers, when they cast into the 

 air small buoyant objects, such as thistle 

 heads. As these objects drifted farther and 

 farther away, they became larger and larger, 

 and as soon as the wind had made them 

 undulate they suddenly took the shape of 

 small boats, the movement of which, above 

 the apparent waves, was in proportion to 

 the shaking they experienced from the wind. 

 A large number of them presented the curi- 

 ous spectacle of a fleet in disorder. The 

 vessels seemed to dash one against the other, 

 and then, driven by the wind to a great dis- 

 tance, they disappeared as completely as if 

 they had gone down. 



(5) — When A. H. Harrison, author of 

 In Search of a Polar Continent, was about 

 five miles from Herschel Island, northern 

 Canada, early in the morning of May 4, 

 1906, he descried a camp and a number of 



dogs about two thousand feet above his 

 head. The camp seemed to be pitched on 

 the top of a mountain. It was turned up- 

 side down, however, and protruded above 

 a curtain of cloud, which enshrouded the 

 summit, save at the very peak. It ap- 

 peared no different through a telescope. 

 When he had journeyed a half hour, he came 

 upon an Eskimo camped on the ice — the 

 same apparition which he had beheld in- 

 verted and far above him. 



(6) — Captain William Scoresby, Jr., the 

 well-known explorer, observed an instance of 

 this kind in the Arctic when he saw his father's 

 ship inverted and very distinct in the sky. 

 With his glass he could distinguish the details 

 of the masts and the hull of the ship which 

 was thirty-four miles distant and fourteen 

 and three-quarters miles beyond the limits 

 of vision. 



(7) — At noon, October 15, 1912, on the 

 Antarctic continent, one of Captain Robert F. 

 Scott's parties saw in the sky to the south a 

 wonderful inversion of a pressure ridge. The 

 sun was very hot with no wind blowing. 



(8) — On one occasion Woltmann noticed 

 in the air the image of the water, and below 

 suspended upside down, the shores, houses, 

 trees, hills, and windmills. A layer of air 

 separated the inverted images from the 

 objects beneath. On another occasion he 

 observed that the inverted image and the 

 objects beneath were in contact. 



(9) — Captain Wilham Scoresby, Jr., ob- 



[ yf Mountains 





Apparatus desipned to illustrate desert mirage. Slabs of blackboard slate mounted on tripods and sprinkled 

 with sand. The mirror reflects the sky when viewed from the opposite end of the artificial desert. Trees, and 

 pasteboard mountains with peaks and valleys, intervene between the light from the sky and the plain. The desert 

 is heated by gas jets, and as the air above it warms up the eye looking along the sand sees in the distance a brilliant 

 pool of water in which the inverted images of the mountains are reflected. After Wood 



Tracings from photograplis of artificial mirages produced by the apparatus described above. After Wood 



