THE RECENT MARVELLOUS SUNSETS.
The marvellous sunsets which have lately been common all over the world have led to a mass of correspondence and conjectures upon the part of scientific men. Perhaps the fullest and most interesting contribution to the literature of the subject is the long article contributed to the Times by Mr Norman Lockyer, who, with many others, is disposed to attribute the phenomena to the presence in the upper regions of the atmosphere of a vast quantity of volcanic dust, the outcome of the terrible eruption—one of the most terrible ever recorded—which took place at Krakatoa in August last. In corroboration of this hypothesis, another correspondent calls attention to the circumstance that similar phenomena were observed in 1783, and are recorded in White’s Selborne as follows: ‘The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rose-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. The country-people began to look with superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the sun; and indeed there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive; for all the while Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.’