PURE AND REFLECTED LIGHT 
21 
combination of color breaks and disappears, 
some equally beautiful one takes its place. 
And when the sun and its cloud coloring have 
gone, when the moon is not in our quarter, then 
falls the night shadow upon the earth and 
through it the shining of the stars. They, too, 
are affected in appearance by the density or the 
clarity of the air through which they are seen. 
The night sky hanging over Sahara is usually 
avery dark purple, but the stars do not shine 
brightly upon it, and they have no marked col- 
orings; yet they appear very near, as though 
one might reach them with an arrow. Where 
the air is more transparent, as in the north 
of America, the night sky is deeper, the stars 
sparkle and throw out tiny shafts of light, 
and they show to the eye different hues of em- 
erald, topaz, amethyst, ruby; but they do not 
appear to be at all near us. Jewels shining 
through adusky veil, they have but little light, 
and that in such small points that the impres- 
sion upon the great mass of shadow lying across 
the earth is not great. We are able to see about 
us on a starry night, but is it by the light of 
the stars alone that we see? Is that light suf- 
ficient to illumine the world even in a feeble 
way ? Atnight one-half of the globe is shut 
Starlight. 
Star colors. 
