Stranica 89 [89]
OCR
REFLEXIONS IN RIPPLED WATER 49 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. ! With a stiff breeze all, except only the very broadest of these cloud reflexions vanish, and, if the upper sky is overcast, the water becomes a cold gray, darkening to an almost inky colour. | Three views of clouds and their reflexions are given. A photograph generally fails to record the more delicate differences of tone in water subjects, and something more is inevitably lost in the process of reproduction. Plate XIV, however, gives fairly well the general appearance of cloud reflexions in a very gentle ripple, and shows. well-defined vertical streaks, due to the disposition of the clouds in the lower half of the sky. Plate XV is a photograph of a cloud-streak in a stronger ripple, whilst XVI gives a still broader effect of the same kind in roughish water. In this latter case the extreme darkness of the water to the left is partly caused by a heavy cloud too high to appear in the photograph. Enough has now been said to illustrate the tendency of moving water to resolve all reflexions into what, for want of a better term, we have called vertical “streaks.”? Plates XVII, XVIII and XIX are ! “Modern Painters,” Vol. I, Part II, Sec. V, Chap. I, § 12. * See Plates IV, XIII and XXIII. E
