346 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
tion of the image or picture. I have a strong impression that on 
leaving the second lens the light shaft carrying the picture is no 
longer in any channel of no resistance. Its path is apparently a 
slender funnel set up by the angle of refraction. Loss of light power 
and size of image would seem to be proportionately less than if the 
picture were broadcasted, as from a picture screen. 
A ship in the sky may show us such a projection. The pilot who 
found himself running head-on toward a Navy ship at an elevation of 
3,000 feet may have been just cutting into the light beam of the mirage 
close to the lens. 
In the case of the repeatedly seen mirages of the city of San Diego, 
the image is picked up at sea level, carried over a 4,000-foot-high 
mountain mass, and brought down again to near sea level some 150 
miles away. Elevation and location of the first lens are unknown; 
those of the second lens may be guessed at, although not too accurately. 
Two of my Operation Long Distance mirage stories fail to fit in 
with the explanation offered. Reports of both the San Jose and San 
Francisco mirages place the observer between the object and the mi- 
rage, seeming to call for something like total reflection. In most other 
cases in all classifications, the mirage is shown between object and 
observer, where it would appear to belong. Either the observers were 
mistaken in identifying these two cities, or we have another unsolved 
problem. Perhaps under the same problem classification belongs the 
apparently reliable story told me by a man living some 12 miles south 
of Yuma. He said he had repeatedly seen a clear mirage of the city 
at about the right distance to the east. 
CONCLUSION 
In conclusion, I should like to emphasize that in dealing with 
this fascinating subject of mirages, even statements of seeming fact 
have been based on a very limited amount of material, largely 
of my own gathering, for the more puzzling mirage forms are so 
rare that no one man is likely to have seen more than a few of 
them. The most valuable contribution that I could hope to make 
in presenting this nontechnical article, with its tentative sugges- 
tions as to the explanation of certain unusual types of mirages, is 
the stimulation of further investigation of the whole subject. 
