Fă'ta-Mor-gă'na

[It., so called because this phenomenon was looked upon as the work of a Fata or Fairy of the name of Morgana. See FAIRY.] A remarkable phenomenon, in which, by an extraordinary atmospheric refraction, images of objects at a distance appear as inverted, distorted, displaced, or multiplied. It is noticed particularly at the Straits of Messina, between Calabria and Italy, where the strata of heated air give rise to this appearance, which is similar to the mirage of the deserts.