209 THE RAINBOW 



perfection; but we had also our share of foggy and 

 drizzly weather. On the night of the 22nd of Septem- 

 ber the atmosphere was especially dark and thick. At 

 9 p.m. I opened a door at the end of a passage and 

 looked out into the gloom. Behind me hung a small lamp, 

 by which the shadow of my body was cast upon the fog. 

 Such a shadow I had often seen, but in the present 

 case it was accompanied by an appearance which I had 

 not previously noticed. Swept through the darkness 

 round the shadow, and far beyond, not only its boun- 

 dary, but also beyond that of the illuminated fog, was a 

 pale, white, luminous circle, complete except at the 

 point where it was cut through by the shadow. As I 

 walked out into the fog, this curious halo went in 

 advance of me. Had not my demerits been so well 

 known to me, I might have accepted the phenomenon 

 as an evidence of canonisation. Benvenuto Cellini saw 

 something of the kind surrounding his shadow, and 

 ascribed it forthwith to supernatural favour. I varied 

 the position and intensity of the lamp, and found even 

 a candle sufficient to render the luminous band visible. 

 With two crossed laths I roughly measured the angle 

 subtended by the radius of the circle, and found it to 

 be practically the angle which had riveted the attention 

 of Descartes — namely, 41°. This and other facts led 

 me to suspect that the halo was a circular rainbow. A 

 week 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 



