The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1894-10-26
SEEING THE MIRAGE
They Are Common Around the
Lake Ontario Region
4 Surprising and Impressive Exhibition
Recently Witnessed by the People
of Buff2lo-A City
In the Air

The region about Buffalo and for
good many miles east OF that city
| seems to be favorable one for seeing
the more distinct and remarkable
effects of that optical illusion known
as the mirage, says the Hartford
Times. a surprisingly distinct one
was seen between nine and ten o'clock
on a recent morning by the people Of
Buffalo. Like previous one, seen by
the passengers in New York Central
train dozen miles or more east of
Buffalo some years ago, the spectacle
was at the north. The one seen from
the cars showed Lake Ontario, with
all its capes and other shore features,
including the trees, with remarkable
distinctness in the sky, although the
real lake at its nearest shore was
thirty or forty miles away and wholly
invisible. The one seen at Buffalo
was the entire city of Toronto, in
Canada, on the lake. some sixty miles
away. Its steeples, docks and other
features were seen, at great distance,
with wonderful distinctness of detail.
Even the steamers on the lake and a
yacht were distinctly shown-the
former pouring out the trailing smoke
from their smokestacks, and the lat
ter, showing exactly the position of the
sails, could be seen careening before
the west wind. The lake itself was
largely visible. 1t must have been n
very surprising and impressive exhibit
ton.
Seen in the sky by the caravan trav-
elers on the desert, the mirage pre-
sents an appearance of objects reflected
In surface of water; cool lakes, with
shady palm tress, mock the hot and
thirst-stricken travellers. The heated
earth rarefies the lower air faster than
1t can ascend and escape. The air is
denser overhead-contrary to the Gus
tomary experience; and the fairness of
the desert contributes to the duration
of the attractive but deceptive appari-
ton. There must be some real lake,
in some cases, as basis for these re-
ported exhibitions. The mirage is
caused by the excessive refraction. or
bending of light rays in penetrating
adjacent layers of air of greater differ
ing densities, not far above the surface
Of the earth. This excessive rcfraction
presents, when the lower stratum Of
air is heated by very hot sun. an up
lifted, distorted or inverted image of
some actual object or scene. Along
certain portions of the Italian coast it
sometimes produces the exhibition
of an inverted ship, up in the
air-the real ship being distant
and invisible and, of course, right side
up. These aerial and marine reflec-
tons, often strange and complicated,
and known as mirage, looming" and
the Italian, ''fata morgana," according
to the characteristics they present, are
all allied to a general law. The school
books have explained the general phe-
nomenon. 1t is out of the usual course
Of things for the lower stratum of air
to be rarer than the one above it, but it
sometimes happens. Suppose the light
rays are coming from a distant land in
visible) object, situated in the denser
stratum, which in these wonderful ex-
hibitions lies over instead Of being be-
meath the rarefed stratum-as a hill
little above the earths surface-the
rays come in direction nearly paral-
lei to the surface, and meet the lower,
rarer medium at a very obtuse angle
Instead of passing into that warmer
air, the rays are reflected back to the
denser stratum above - the common
surface of the two strata acting as
mirror. Let the spectator be looking
from some eminence, at an object thus
situated. like himself, in the denser air,
and he will see it by directly transmit
ted rays; but rays from it also will be
reflected-from the upper surface OF
the lower, more heated air-presenting
the image inverted and in lower posi-
ton. In the reproduction of distant and
invisible objects-as in the case of the
city of Toronto. seen so plainly in the
sky sixty miles south, at Buffalo - the
phenomenon belongs, apparently, to
the class known to sailors as looming"