6 DECEMBER 1940, Page 14

Sun - Dogs The sun-dog, the vague rainbow-coloured sky-shape that precedes rain,

has been extremely common all through the days of autumn gales. Its position in relation to the sun, a little to the right, does not seem to vary, and as a forecast of imminent rain it has, on my observation, not once been wrong. But occasionally, and often at the same time, one could observe a new phenomenon: the sun-dog of the dog-fight. It, too, was only a vague handful of rainbow light, a drift of exhaust or oil-vapour caught and coloured by some accident of sun; one more of the freaks of sky-beauty that no age but our own has seen.