Solar Halo Seen in Russia.
(By permission from Camille Flammarion's "Meteorologie.")
"'In the west, where the sun is setting, the colors are all different. The whitish light spreads quite a long way up into the blue, but when the sun comes close to the horizon, this turns to yellow, lighter higher up and darker lower down. It is sometimes reddish at the horizon line, and the clouds are turned to pink.
"'After the sun has really gone down, the yellow gets darker, changing into orange, sometimes, while the white spot spreads sideways and its upper edge marks off the brighter from the darker bits of the sky.
"'In the darker part of the sky, at about quarter way up, a purple glow suddenly appears. It grows bigger quickly, making a circle, the lower edge of which looks as though it slipped behind the yellow strip. This purple spot in the west comes just as the purple rainbow in the east is dying out, and as the western purple spot grows it gets brighter, so that there is a time, after the sun sets, when it seems brighter than it did before.'"
"That's queer," interrupted Fred.
The printer thought for a moment.
"It's right, bedad," he said, "I've noticed it meself."