Dear Dr. Boli: I have on many occasions been forced to vigorously defend against hostile skeptics, my long held belief that at the end of every rainbow is a creel full of trout. Are you aware of any scientific evidence to refute this? —Sincerely, Clay Potts.

Dear Sir: The ends of rainbows have not been explored much of late, though several famous expeditions were mounted in the nineteenth century. The prominent Victorian spectrologist Hugo Pennybetter, whose success as a student of all things related to the rainbow is all the more remarkable because he was completely colorblind, explored a number of rainbows in South America in the winter (or, below the equator, summer) of 1877-1878. He was able to reach the ends of four rainbows, a record never equaled by any other explorer. At the end of the first he found a pot of gold, but only inferior 10-karat stuff that failed even to pay the expenses of the expedition. At the end of the second he found a unicorn, a gryphon, a chimera, a cockatrice, a sphinx, and a duck. At the end of the third he found a platter (not a creel) of trout, but (surprisingly enough) speckled trout, not rainbow trout. It is not known what he found at the end of the fourth, since, having found it, he refused to come back.