th them; these are called
"whirly-curlies" in Worcestershire, and are regarded as a sign of fine
weather. I have sometimes seen quite a strong one crossing rows of hay
just ready to carry, cutting a clean track through each row, and
leaving the ground bare where it passed. The hay is often carried to a
great height, and sometimes dropped in an adjoining field.

On a bright morning in summer one often sees, a little distance away,
a tremulous or flickering movement in the air, not far from the
ground, which Tennyson refers to in _In Memoriam_, as, "The landscape
winking thro' the heat"; and again in _The Princess_:

"All the rich to come
Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels
Athwart the smoke of burning weeds."

I am told that this appearance is "due to layers of air of different
degrees of refracting power, in motion, relative to one another. Air
at different temperatures will refract light differently." In
Hampshire this phenomenon is known by the pretty name of "the summer
dance."

Since I came to the Forest I have seen two very curious and, I think,
unusual natural appearances. As I was cycling one rather dull
afternoon from Wimborne to Ringwood, I noticed a colourless rainbow,
or perhaps I should say, "mist-bow," for there was no rain, and the
sun was partially obscured. The sun was about south-west, and the bow
was north-east; it was merely a series of well-defined but colourless
segments of circles, close to each other but shaded so as to make them
distinguishable, arranged exactly like a rainbow but without a trace
of colour beyond a grey uniformity. It was on my left for several
miles, perhaps half of the total distance of nine miles between the
two towns.

Cycling another day between Lyndhurst and Burley, I reached the east
entrance of Burley Lodge, which is on higher ground than the farm
spread out to the right in the valley. The whole valley was filled
with thick white mist, as level as a lake, so that nothing could be
seen of the fields. The setting sun was low down at the further
extremity of the valley, and the surface of the mist-lake reflected
its rays in a rosy sheen, with a track of brighter light in the
middle, stretching from the far end of the lake in a broad path almost
to where I was standing; just as we see the track of sunlight or
moonlight, sometimes, on the sea, from the shore. This phenomenon is
not uncommon when one is looking down from the top of a