ON THE COLORATION OF THE CHINA SEA. 69 



thing like the fumes of tobacco, but without any bluish tint. Aboiit 

 2 p. M. I walked for two hours in the country : the whole atmosphere 

 appeared laden with a light cloud of dust, tinged of a brownish colour ; 

 that was its aspect during the whole day. The setting sun had a diameter 

 apparently less than in the winter evenings, and was of a sickly pale hue. 

 At 10 o'clock p. M. I spread out two large papers to catch the sand : they 

 remained spread out until past midnight ; but although the sand fell and 

 remained upon the guns none fell upon the paper. Was this the result of 

 an electrical attraction or not? I cannot say. The stars in the Great 

 Bear, although the firmament was without clouds, were visible only with 

 difficulty at the zenith. The moon, three days past the full, was partially 

 obscured, and threw a very feeble shadow upon my hand. At midnight 

 the moon and the stars resumed their ordinary appearance, and at half-past 

 one the quarter-master reported that the fog had ceased. The barometer 

 fell from 30" to 29*88". The sand set the teeth on edge when one breathed 

 it. The whole surface of this district is an alluvial clay, without flints or 

 sand ; the nearest sand, which is coarse and shelly, is 12 miles off. It 

 is said that the merchant ship ' Denia ' encountered this shower of sand 

 at 30'5 miles from the land, in the direction of Leou-Tcheou, and that 

 there was a kind of pounce-like dust upon the waves. As I have not seen 

 her log I cannot certify this fact. 



" Yoms, &c., 



" J. Bellott." 



Dr. Macgowan, in forwarding' this letter from Ningpo to 

 the Secretary of the Asiatic Society, adds the following detail 

 to the narrative of Mr. Bellott : - 



" I learn from Dr. Eobertson, of the steamer ' Nemesis,' of the East 

 India Company's service, stationed in this port, that on the day in ques- 

 tion (15th March), he as well as several other officers had observed similar 

 phenomena to those described by Dr. Bellott ; the vegetation was covered 

 with sand and also many of the ships, and the atmos])here was clouded. 

 The wmd was N. E. I was then absent at Chusan, where I did not per- 

 ceive either sand or dust," 



Besides the fact remarked by Mr. Piddington, it appears 

 from Mr. Bellott's letter, and also from that of Dr. Macgowan, 

 that the cloud of dust extended the same day from Ningpo, at 

 the 30° of N. lat. to Shanghai, at the 31^° in round num- 

 bers, which gives an extent of 90 miles ; that it was accom- 

 panied by light winds from the N. N. E. and from the E, N. E. 

 during seventeen hours, from 8 o'clock in the morning until 

 an hour after midnight ; that reckoning that the cloud tra- 

 velled at the rate of 2 5 miles an hour (and tliat is the 

 lovi'^est rate that can be taken), the length of the cloud must 

 be from 17 X '^Ih, that is to say 42 miles; and thus, in 

 allowing for the little difference of longitude between Ningpo 

 and Shanghai, situated very near to one another, one to the 

 N. W. and the other to the S. E,, there remains an extent of 

 3,825 square miles for the cloud. 



Mr. Piddington reports that having only had a grain and a 

 half of sand in his possession he could not study it com- 



