Referee report by J. F. W. Herschel on 'Astronomical Experiment on the Peak of Teneriffe, Carried out under the Sanction of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty' by C. Piazzi Smyth

                                lateral mirage are extremely rare, it would seem then 
that Baron Humboldt & Prince Adalbert, each, had the hap 
to encounter one in his respective single ascent of the Peak 
which Mr. Smyth had not during his month’s sojourn at his highest station - The 
former however, accompan<s>ying<\s>ies his recital with the mention 
of circumstances incompatible with the local situation 
of the place of Observation - He says that he saw the Island 
of Palma where it appears it could not be seen, and he 
omits to mention as visible, the Grand Canary, which he 
might have seen. The charitable supposition would be 
that, not referring in the twilight to a Chart, or not willing 
to lose time, or risk accident, in clambering over the Malpays 
while so doing - he mistook the one for the other - But it 
also appears that he conceived himself to have seen Fortaventura 
& Lancerote which apparently could not have been the case 
Here appears to be an inaccuracy certainly - But if it
be allowed to invalidate the account given of a positively 
stated fact fixedly observed & noted as extraordinary during 
8 minutes, it must be held also to destroy every other obser 
-vation made by him on that occasion, and even the fact that 
Baron H. ever ascended the peak at all. - I think that 
in rectifying (if it be considered necessary to do so,) inaccu-
-racies & inadvertencies into which Baron H. may have fallen,
such as those above noticed, or that of the grassy slope in p.73
Vol.9. at a place where no grass now grows & probably did not 
grow then, & which he therefore must have confounded in re-
-collection with some other place, (for that he did slip <u>somewhere<\u>
on grass in the descent, I, for one, believe.) - in rectifying, I say,
if necessary, these inaccuracies, I cannot but think that the 
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