AND ITS CONGENERS. 211 



its outer boundary. The stooping was not necessary, 

 and as we walked along the new Portsmouth road, with 

 the Punch Bowl to our left, the white arch marched 

 along with us. At a certain point we ascended to the 

 old Portsmouth road, whence, with a flat space of very 

 dark heather in the foreground, we watched the bow. 

 The sun had then become strong, and the sky above us 

 blue, nothing which could in any proper sense be called 

 rain existing at the time in the atmosphere. Suddenly 

 my companion exclaimed, " I see the whole circle 

 meeting at my feet ! " At the same moment the circle 

 became visible to me also. It was the darkness of our 

 immediate foreground that enabled us to see the lower 

 half of the pale luminous band projected against it. 

 We walked round Hind Head Common with the bow 

 almost always in view. Its crown sometimes disap- 

 peared, showing that the minute globules which pro- 

 duced it did not extend to any great height in the 

 atmosphere. In such cases two shining buttresses 

 were left behind, which, had not the bow been pre- 

 viously seen, would have lacked all significance. In 

 some of the combes, or valleys, where the floating par- 

 ticles had collected in greater numbers, the end of the 

 bow plunging into the combe emitted a light of more 

 than the usual brightness. During our walk the bow 

 wa< broken and re-formed several times; and, had it 

 not been for our previous experience both in the Alps 

 and at Hind Head, it might well have escaped atten- 

 tion. What this colourless white bow lost in intensity, 

 as compared with the ordinary coloured bow, was more 

 than atoned for by its weirdness and its novelty to 

 both observers. 



The white rainbow (Varc-en-del blanc) was first 

 described by the Spaniard Don Antonio de Ulloa, Lieu- 

 tenant of the Company of Gentlemen Guards of the 



