SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT ON METEOROLOGY. — 135 
289. Vertical lines passing through the sun and circles con- 
taining the sun in their circumference have also been described. 
The former seem to be independent of the existence of ice cry- 
stals; I shall therefore return to them presently. As to the lat- 
ter, we can only state generally, that from the wonderful com- 
plication which the figures of crystallized snow and hoar-frost 
take, we can conceive circumstances adapted to almost every 
degree of complication ; and such complication may be aptly 
illustrated by the curious figures which Sir D. Brewster has 
given of the wonderful variety of reflected figures observed at 
the surfaces of disintegrated crystals*. The same ingenious 
philosopher has illustrated the phenomena of halos by observing 
a distant light through alum crystallized rapidly on a plate of 
lass +. 
“ 290. M. Galle of the Berlin Observatory has lately published 
an elaborate paper on the subject of halos and parheliat, in 
which he gives a minute account of those observed by himself 
during nineteen months. Within this time he saw seventy-eight 
halos of 223°; of which only two were sensibly elliptical ; and 
he saw no halo of 46°. He afterwards gives at great length a 
general view of the theory of refraction by ice-prisms. 
291. A remarkable parhelic appearance was observed by 
Lambert at Wetzler, in 1838, in which there were two hori- 
zontal circles at greater altitudes than the sun, but none passing 
through his disc. Besides the usual lateral parhelia there were 
four others at the points of contact and intersection of the halos 
of 223°, and 46° with the horizontal circles §. 
D. Corone: Glories, &c. 
292. The coloured rings so frequently seen round the sun 
and moon when thin clouds pass over their discs, are carefully 
to be distinguished from true halos, as they may easily be, by 
the following characteristics, which evidently point to a wholly 
different origin :— 
* Edin. Trans., vol. xiv. plate x., &c. 
+ Edin. Phil. Journal, viii. 394. This experiment, which has probably been 
oftener quoted than repeated, I have more than once attempted without success. 
t Poggendorff’s Annalen, 1840. xxxix. and 241. 
§ L’ Institut, No. 321, Fev. 1840. M, Moigno, who quotes this description 
from Poggendorff’s Annalen, claims for M. Babinet the theory of the parhelic 
circle and vertical parhelia. These are, however, both due to Young; the only 
addition which, so far as I know, M. Babinet has made, is the very just remark 
that the horizontal circle will be brighter beyond the first halo than within 
it, because in the latter case the illumination is derived from reflexion only, 
by the vertical facets; in the former from refraction likewise. 
