named to me the different places they had been accustomed to visit, such as the Bay, the Old Head, or Man, the Windmill, &c. at Boulogne, St. Vallery, and other places on the coast of Picardy, which they afterwards confirmed, when they viewed them through their telescopes. Their observations were, that the places appeared as near as if they were sailing, at a small distance, into the harbours. The day on which this phenomenon was seen was extremely hot; it was high water at Hastings about two o’clock, P.M., and not a breath of wind was stirring the whole day.’ From the summit of an adjacent hill, a most beautiful scene is said to have presented itself. At one glance the spectators could see Dungeness, Dover Cliffs, and the French coast, all along from Calais to St. Vallery, and, as some affirmed, as far to the westward as Dieppe, which could not be much less than eighty or ninety miles. By the telescope, the French fishing-boats were plainly seen at anchor, and the different colours of the land on the heights, with the buildings, were perfectly discernible. This singular phenomenon was doubtless occasioned by an extraordinary refraction produced either by an unusual expansion, or condensation of the lower strata of the atmosphere, arising from circumstances connected with the extreme heat of the season. The objects seem to have been apparently raised far above their natural positions; for, from the beach at Hastings, a straight line drawn across towards the French coast, would have been intercepted by the curve of the waters. They seem also to have been magnified by the refraction, and brought apparently four or five times nearer the eye than in the ordinary state of the atmosphere. The following are likewise instances of unusual refraction:--When Captain Colby was ranging over the coast of Caithness, with the telescope of his great Theodolite, on the 21st of June, 1819, at eight o’clock, P.M. from Corryhabbie Hill, near Mortlich, in Banffshire, he observed a brig over the land of Caithness, sailing to the westward in the Pentland Frith, between the Dunnet and Duncansby heads. Having satisfied himself as to the fact, he requested his assistants, Lieutenants Robe and Dawson, to look through the telescope, which they immediately did, and observed the brig likewise. It was very distinctly visible for several minutes, while the party continued to look at it, and to satisfy themselves as to its position. The brig could not have been less than from ninety to one hundred miles distant; and, as the station on Corryhabbie is not above 850 yards above the sea, the phenomenon is interesting. The thermometer was at 44°. The night and day preceding the sight of the brig had been continually rainy and misty, and it was not till 7 o’clock of the evening of the 21st that the clouds cleared off the hill.[8]