STILL WATERS 
185 
foliage. As the canoe slipped over these 
sky-lighted spots, the stars could be seen 
trembling for a moment in the water, and 
then the sweep of the paddle would scatter 
them into a thousand tiny flashings. A similar 
effect can be seen almost any night on the 
mountain-lake where trees or banks overhang 
the water. 
It is, perhaps, necessary to explain still 
further the statement that water is always 
throwing back from its surface ‘‘some like- 
ness ” of whatever is above it. The likeness is 
not always and invariably exact in form, any 
more than it is in color or light. In the first 
place, the reflection is always the reverse of the 
original, as is a human face ina mirror. That 
is to say, left is right, and right is left. Sec- 
ondly, the background of the reflection may be 
different from the original. Standing on a 
bank twenty feet high and looking across water 
fifty feet to a low shore, we may discover that a 
bush overhanging the water has a green meadow 
for a background, but in its reflected image it 
has a blue sky fora background. Thirdly, the 
tint or shade of this same bush in the reflection is 
not the tint or shade of the original ; and this 
for another cause than local color in the water. 
Variations 
tn reylec- 
tion. 
The like- 
ness inexact, 
