182 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I 

 not been about at all hours with my gun as a boy. It 

 is much more visible by moonlight, when the rabbits' 

 white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the grass, and you 

 are just as likely to shoot at their shadows as at their 

 bodies. As the scythe of the mower mows a swathe 

 before him, so the semicircle of light moves in front 

 over the dew, and the grass appears another tint, as it 

 does after a roller has passed. 



In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was 

 published describing what the writer supposed was 

 indeed something extraordinary. He had seen a frag- 

 ment of rainbow — a square piece, as it were — by itself 

 in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In 

 provincial papers such letters may often be found, and 

 even, until lately, in papers issued in London; now with 

 accurate accounts of an ordinary halo about the sun, 

 now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the 

 moon, and one day some one discovered that there were 

 two currents of air, as the clouds went in two directions. 

 Now, it is clear enough that none of these writers had 

 ever been out with a gun or a rod ; I mean out all day, 

 and out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read 

 books of science ; from their language they were 

 thoroughly educated, and felt a deep interest in natural 

 phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made out 

 of the commonest incidents of the sky ! Halos about 

 the sun happen continually; the prismatic band or 

 cloud about the moon is common ; so is the detached 

 rainbow ; as for the two currents of air, the clouds 

 often travel in three directions, occasionally in four. 

 These incidents are no more surprising to a sportsman 



