Stranica 67 [67]
OCR
REFLEXIONS IN RIPPLED WATER 37 J in countless wavelets, is a vertical line of light. (See Note at end of chapter.) This phenomenon is seen to perfection in any harbour at night, where the lights of the vessels at anchor are represented in the water by long quivering lines. When the motion of the water is very gentle, these lines are wonderfully well defined, but with the slightest breeze they become blurred and indistinct. In the reflexion of the moon, when the ripples are very regular, the image is a path of light of about the same width as the moon itself, consist“ing of a succession of horizontal lines, as shown in Plate III, but there are points outside this limit that occasionally catch the light, and as the surface gets more ruffled, the streak of light widens and becomes less clearly defined, so that looking from a distance the state of the water can sometimes be roughly judged by the width of this streak of sun or moonlight. When, as so often happens, the silver pathway beneath the moon widens out towards the horizon, we have an indication that there is more breeze or rougher water at some distance from the shore. Or only a remote part of the water may catch the glitter, the intervening surface being too quiet to show it at all. It is a common thing on the West coast of Scotland to see the sun reflected towards evening in the sheltered waters at the head of a loch, its image swinging placidly at one’s feet, whilst in the more open sea beyond there is a patch of dazzling light under the sun, reflected from the near sides of the . waves. But the width of this streak of light also depends
