Straw Bonnets.
It is estimated that the value of straw bonnets manufactured in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, exceeds 300,000 dollars in the 1817, and great improvements have latterly been made,—which, together with the discovery of a vegetable by which the best quality of Leghorn bonnets are successfully imitated, is likely to render our fair country-women independent of foreign supplies in this respect, and at the same time furnish a delicate employment to many others of their own sex. There are few things that more properly demand the attention of congress than this manufacture, so far as its amount goes. As, gentleman, certainly they will encourage the ladies in their industrious habits.
Phenomena.
Boston (Mass.) Jan. 5th.
Saturday about noon two very brilliant Parhelia, (or Mock Suns[22]) and beautiful Corona, attracted the attention of numerous spectators. Mock Suns were equidistant from the Sun (by conjecture about 20° East and West of it) with comas, or tails, extending in opposite directions from the luminary five or six times their diameter, which appeared to the eye a little less than the apparent diameter of the Sun. The Corona was estimated to be about 30° to the northward of the Sun, and nearly in our zenith, and exhibited all the bright colours of the rainbow, the inside next the Sun being red. The colour of the Parhelia was orange colour of white flame. The Corona formed an are of about a quarter of a circle; and between it and the Sun was a segment less brilliant and defined.
The atmosphere was unusually clear, and the space between the Mock Suns, and the real Sun, was a perfect blue expanse, without the least appearance of the vapour and spicula which must have occasioned the phenomena. We noticed them nearly an hour, when they gradually disappeared, leaving a cloudless sky. The phenomena was observed at Salem.