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.
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