r would. Therefore all motion in water elongates
reflections, and throws them into confused vertical lines. The real
amount of this elongation is not distinctly visible, except in the case
of very bright objects, and especially of lights, as of the sun, moon,
or lamps by a river shore, whose reflections are hardly ever seen as
circles or points, which of course they are on perfectly calm water, but
as long streams of tremulous light.

But it is strange that while we are constantly in the habit of seeing
the reflection of the sun, which ought to be a mere circle, elongated
into a stream of light extending from the horizon to the shore, the
elongation of the reflection of a sail or other object to one-half of
this extent is received, if represented in a picture, with incredulity
by the greater number of spectators. In one of Turner's Venices the
image of the white lateen-sails of the principal boat is about twice as
long as the sails themselves. I have heard the truth of this simple
effect disputed over and over again by intelligent persons, and yet on
any water so exposed as the lagoons of Venice, the periods are few and
short when there is so little motion as that the reflection of sails a
mile off shall not affect the swell within six feet of the spectator.

There is, however, a strange arbitrariness about this elongation of
reflection, which prevents it from being truly felt. If we see on an
extent of lightly swelling water surface the image of a bank of white
clouds, with masses of higher accumulation at intervals, the water will
not usually reflect the whole bank in an elongated form, but it will
commonly take the eminent parts, and reflect them in long straight
columns of defined breadth, and miss the intermediate lower parts
altogether; and even in doing this it will be capricious, for it will
take one eminence, and miss another, with no apparent reason; and often
when the sky is covered with white clouds, some of those clouds will
cast long tower-like reflections, and others none, so arbitrarily that
the spectator is often puzzled to find out which are the accepted and
which the refused.

In many cases of this kind it will be found rather that the eye is, from
want of use and care, insensible to the reflection than that the
reflection is not there; and a little thought and careful observation
will show us that what we commonly suppose to be a surface of uniform
color is, indeed, affected more or less by an infi