Sec. 11. The Blue of the Sky.

I am unwilling to quit these chromatic phenomena without referring to a source of colour which has often come before me of late in the blue of your skies at noon, and the deep crimson of your horizon after the set of sun.  I will here summarize and extend what I have elsewhere said upon this subject.  Proofs of the most cogent description could be adduced to show that the blue light of the firmament is reflected light.  That light comes to us across the direction of the solar rays, and even against the direction of the solar rays; and this lateral and opposing rush of wave-motion can only be due to the rebound of the waves from the air itself, or from something suspended in the air.  The solar light, moreover, is not scattered by the sky in the proportions which produce white.  The sky is blue, which indicates an excess of the smaller waves.  The blueness of the air has been given as a reason for the blueness of the sky; but then the question arises, How, if the air be blue, can the light of sunrise and sunset, which travels through vast distances of air, be yellow, orange, or even red?  The passage of the white solar light through a blue medium could by no possibility redden the light; the hypothesis of a blue atmosphere is therefore untenable.  In fact, the agent, whatever it be, which sends us the light of the sky, exercises in so doing a dichroitic action.  The light reflected is blue, the light transmitted is orange or red, A marked distinction is thus exhibited between reflection from the sky and that from an ordinary cloud, which exercises no such dichroitic action.

The cloud, in fact, takes no note of size on the part of the waves of ether, but reflects them all alike.  Now the cause of this may be that the cloud-particles are so large in comparison with the size of the waves of ether as to scatter them all indifferently.  A broad cliff reflects an Atlantic roller as easily as it reflects a ripple produced by a sea-bird’s wing; and, in the presence of large reflecting surfaces, the existing differences of magnitude among the waves of ether may also disappear.  But supposing the reflecting particles, instead of being very large, to be very small, in comparison with the size of the waves.  Then, instead of the whole wave being fronted and in great part thrown back, a small portion only is shivered off by the obstacle.  Suppose, then, such minute foreign particles to be diffused in our atmosphere.  Waves of all sizes impinge upon them, and at every collision a portion of the impinging wave is struck off.  All the waves of the spectrum, from the extreme red to the extreme violet, are thus acted upon; but in what proportions will they be scattered?  Largeness is a thing of relation; and the smaller the wave, the greater is the relative size of any particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater also the relative reflection.