Captain Scoresby relates several remarkable appearances of a similar kind, one of which I will describe to you. He saw one morning the inverted image of a ship in the air, which he at once recognized to be that in which his father was sailing. "It was," says he, "so well defined, that I could distinguish by a telescope every sail, the general rig of the ship, and its particular character; insomuch that I confidently pronounced it to be my father's ship, 'The Fame,' which it afterwards proved to be; though on comparing notes with my father, I found that our relative position at the time, gave a distance from one another of thirty miles, being about seventeen miles beyond the horizon, and some leagues beyond the limit of direct vision." Many other such things have been related by travellers, but with very little variation of circumstance. APPARENT DISTANCE OF OBJECTS. If you have never noticed the fact, you will be surprised to observe what a great difference appears to exist in the distance of the same objects under different states of the atmosphere. I do not mean when it is merely clearer than at another time, but when it is equally clear, the same object will show much higher above the horizon, and therefore seem to be nearer to some given spot, than at other times. We who have been at sea, have often seen this when we have been approaching land; but you will better understand an instance which occurred at Hastings, on the coast of Sussex. The gentleman who related it was surprised one day to see a crowd of people running down to the sea-side, and on inquiry he found they were going in consequence of a report that the coast of France had become visible to the naked eye. He went down to the beach, and actually saw the coast of France so plainly as to be able to distinguish objects, and with a telescope he even clearly saw French fishing-boats at anchor, close to the shore. The illusion lasted for more than an hour, and occasionally grew faint and then brightened again. The distance is fifty miles, and Hastings would therefore be hidden from the opposite coast of France by the convexity of the earth; so that if a straight line were drawn from one to the other, it would pass through the sea. CHAPTER IX. OF THE FATA MORGANA AND THE MIRAGE. There is a very remarkable spectacle to be occasionally seen between the coasts of Italy and Sicily, which the inhabitants call Fata Morgana, or _Fairy Illusion_.