Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/683

Rh 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 canonization. Benvenuto Cellini saw something of the kind surrounding his shadow, and ascribed it forthwith to supernatural favor. 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 vigor. The hut has two doors, one opening to the north and the other to the south, and in it we have been able to occupy ourselves pleasantly and profitably during the recent misty weather. Removing the shade from a small petroleum-lamp, and placing the lamp behind me, as I stood in either doorway, the luminous circles surrounding my shadow on different nights were very remarkable. Sometimes they were best to the north, and sometimes the reverse, the difference depending for the most part on the direction of the wind. On Christmas-night the atmosphere was particularly good-natured. It was filled with true fog, through which, however, descended palpably an extremely fine rain. Both to the north and to the south of the hut the luminous circles were on this occasion specially bright and well-defined. They were, as I have said, swept through the fog far beyond its illuminated area, and it was the darkness against which they were projected which enabled them to shed so much apparent light. The "effective rays," therefore, which entered the eye in this observation gave direction, but not distance, so that the circles appeared to come from a portion of the atmosphere which had nothing to do with their production. When the lamp was taken out into the fog, the illumination of the medium almost obliterated the halo. Once educated, the eye could trace it, but it was toned down almost to vanishing. There is some advantage, therefore, in possessing a hut, on a moor or on a mountain, having doors which limit the area of fog illuminated.

I have now to refer to another phenomenon which is but rarely seen, and which I had an opportunity of witnessing on Christmas-day. The mist and drizzle in the early morning had been very dense; a walk before breakfast caused my somewhat fluffy pilot dress to be covered with minute water-globules, which, against the dark background