ATMOSPHEROLOGY. — WINDS. 399 



mometer stood at 10% at 4 p. m., it had risen to 17°, 

 and at 6 p. m. to 37°. This remarkable rise, of 17° 

 of temperature in nine hours, indicated a southerly 

 or easterly wind, and, because the barometer had 

 fallen to 29.50, a severe storm was expected. Since 

 the barometer stands highest on easterly winds, 

 had it remained stationary, we should have expected 

 a storm, on the veering of the wind from the N. W. 

 to the opposite quarter ; but, when this change was 

 preceded by a fall of near four-tenths of an inch in 

 the column of mercury, a violent gale might be an- 

 ticipated. 



I now walked the deck somewhat alarmed at the 

 awful appearance of the sky, in the short intervals 

 of the showers. At one time, a luminousness re- 

 sembling the ice-blink, appeared in the horizon, ex- 

 tending from the N. N. E. to the E. S. E *. It did 

 not, however, proceed from any ice, as I was after- 

 wards perfectly satisfied ; neither was it likely to 

 arise from the effects of the sun, as it was in the 

 western quarter. 



• A few weeks afterwards, when mentioning this circum- 

 stance to an old Greenland commander, he told me he had 

 seen the phenomenon I described, and always considered it 

 as the prognostic of a storm, while the position of the lumi- 

 nousness pointed out the quarter from whence the wind would 

 commence. 



