Many of the phenomena that have been ascribed to extraordinary refraction seem to be occasioned by a partial or total reflection of the rays of light at the surfaces of strata of different densities (N. 189). It is well known that, when light falls obliquely upon the external surface of a transparent medium, as on a plate of glass or a stratum of air, one portion is reflected and the other transmitted. But, when light falls very obliquely upon the internal surface, the whole is reflected, and not a ray is transmitted. In all cases the angles made by the incident and reflected rays with a perpendicular to the surface being equal, as the brightness of the reflected image depends on the quantity of light, those arising from total reflection must be by far the most vivid. The delusive appearance of water, so well known to African travellers and to the Arab of the desert as the Lake of the Gazelles, is ascribed to the reflection which takes place between strata of air of different densities, owing to radiation of heat from the arid sandy plains. The mirage described by Captain Mundy in his Journal of a Tour in India probably arises from this cause. “A deep precipitous valley below us, at the bottom of which I had seen one or two miserable villages in the morning, bore in the evening a complete resemblance to a beautiful lake; the vapour which played the part of water ascending nearly half way up the sides of the vale, and on its bright surface trees and rocks being distinctly reflected. I had not been long contemplating this phenomenon, before a sudden storm came on and dropped a curtain of clouds over the scene.” An occurrence which happened on the 18th of November, 1804, was probably produced by reflection. Dr. Buchan, while watching the rising sun from the cliff about a mile to the east of Brighton, at the instant the solar disc emerged from the surface of the ocean, saw the cliff on which he was standing, a windmill, his own figure and that of a friend, depicted immediately opposite to him on the sea. This appearance lasted about ten minutes, till the sun had risen nearly his own diameter above the surface of the waves. The whole then seemed to be elevated into the air, and successively vanished. The rays of the sun fell upon the cliff at an incidence of 73° from the perpendicular, and the sea was covered with a dense fog many yards in height, which gradually receded before the rising sun. When extraordinary refraction takes place laterally, the strata of variable density are perpendicular to the horizon, and, if combined with vertical refraction, the objects are magnified as when seen through a telescope. From this cause, on the 26th of July, 1798, the cliffs of France, fifty miles off, were seen as distinctly from Hastings as if they had been close at hand; and even Dieppe was said to have been visible in the afternoon.