And the little island sinks back to its quiet and its calm. The lagoon lies placid like a mirror. The slow sea breaks eternally on the outer reef. The white clouds sail over day by day. The seabirds come back to their haunts,—the fierce man-of-war birds, the gentle, soft-eyed tern. But we, whose island home was thus invaded—are we the same? Was this a dream? Will it happen again next year? every year? What indeed was it that happened,—or in fact, did it happen at all? Is it not a dream, indeed?
If we left those peaceful Kanakas to their dream, we Americans have brought ours away with us. Who will forget it? Which of us does not wish to be in that peaceful fairyland once more? That is the personal longing. But we have all come back, each one with his note-books full; and in a few weeks the stimulus of accustomed habit has taken possession of us again. Right and wrong are again determined by "municipal sanctions." We have become useful citizens once more. Perhaps it is just as well. We should have been poor poets, and we do not forget. So ends the astronomer's voyage to fairyland.
HALOS—PARHELIA—THE SPECTRE OF THE BROCKEN, ETC
(From The Atmosphere.)
By CAMILLE FLAMMARION.
Treatises on meteorology have not, up to the present day, classified with sufficient regularity the divers optical phenomena of the air. Some of these phenomena have, however, been seen but rarely, and have not been sufficiently studied to admit of their classification. We have examined the common phenomenon of the rainbow and we have seen that it is due to the refraction and reflection of light on drops of water, and that it is seen upon the opposite side of the sky to the sun in day-time, or the moon at night. We are now about to consider an order of phenomena which are of rarer occurrence, but which have this property in common with the rainbow, viz., that they take place also upon the side of the sky opposite to the sun. These different optical effects are classed together under the name of anthelia (from Greek, opposite to, and Greek, the sun). The optical phenomena which occur on the same side as, or around the sun, such as halos, parhelia, etc., will be dealt with later on.