REMARKABLE MIRAGES.

Western Star, Issue 1294, 6 March 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

REMARKABLE MIRAGES.

The mirage can be seen nearly every day ia the plains cf Lower Egypt, and als6-t6 a limited extent in the plains of Hungary and Southern Franoe. Now and thjen something of the kind can be seen in Summer by stooping down and looking along our sandy coasts,such ar iMOrecamba Bay and the coast of Devonshire or over the Pen district, at that season dried up by the hot summer heat.' :' ; ;''.'"" > ■ ...

Cold heavy air over-water is just as it were in the opposite condition from warm light air over a sandy desert; hence, in the latter case the rays are bsnt in the opposite direction, and seemed to come from an object below the real one. So that in'the 1 mirage of the desert the observer sees the distant object directly through the uniform glare of the air between himself and it, and he likewise sees an inverted image below, aa if caused by a reflection in a shaet of water Indeed, travellers across the desert have often been cheated by the ..appearance*.* A deputy surveyor general of boutu Australia onca reported the existence of a large inland lake there. He did not take the precaution to go up to it; and when the lake was afterwards sought for, it was found that he had been deceived by the mirage. Sometimes, however, objects are hot only elevated but inverted. This appearance is very common in the Polar seas, the inversion being due to the rays from the lower partvof; the distant object being more bent than those from the upper part. Sailors see it best from a lofty position, such as the mast head. A well-known case occurred off the coast of Greenland in 1822, when Captain Scoresby was made aware of the nearness of his father's ship by recognising its inverted image in the sky. And in 1854 the whole English fleet of nineteen sail wa3 aean as if suspended in the aiirupside down by those : on board H.M.S. Archer, cruising, fifty miles away, off Oesel in the Baltic.' It is not unusual to see two or three different horizons with images of a distant vessel alternately' inverted and upright.