Curiosities of Science, Past and Present / A Book for Old and Young

by John Timbs

LIGHT NIGHTS.

It is not possible, as well-attested facts prove, perfectly to explain the operations at work in the much-contested upper boundaries of our atmosphere. The extraordinary lightness of whole nights in the year 1831, during which small print might be read at midnight in the latitudes of Italy and the north of Germany, is a fact directly at variance with all that we know, according to the most recent and acute researches on the crepuscular theory and the height of the atmosphere.—Biot.