Note 186 — LETTERS ON SCIENCE.

In the first edition of “Modern Painters” (vol. i. p. 330) it was stated that “the horizontal lines cast by clouds upon the sea are not shadows, but reflections;” and that “on clear water near the eye there can never be even the appearance of shadow.” This statement being questioned in a letter to the Art Union Journal (November, 1843), and that letter being itself criticised in a review of “Modern Painters” in the Artist and Amateur’s Magazine, p. 262 (December, 1843), there appeared in the last-named periodical two letters upon the subject, of which one was from J. H. Maw, the correspondent of the Art Union, and the other—that reprinted here—a reply from “The Author of ‘Modern Painters.’ ”