TO THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 167 
Saturday, January 1st, 1820.—The new year 
was ushered in without any remarkable event 
to distinguish it: the cold has not, as we ex- 
pected, been at all severe; for the thermometer 
at midnight last (that is at the moment of the 
commencement of the year) was only 5°. About 11 
o’clock this forenoon a very beautiful halo, 45° in 
diameter, was observed round the moon. It was in- 
tersected by two luminous columns of a yellowish 
white colour, which crossed each other at right an- 
gles over the moon’s disc. The breadth of this cross, 
or rather of the columns that formed it, was equal 
to the moon’s diameter, in her immediate vicinity ; 
but, as they receded from her, they became nar- 
rower, so that at the place where they touched the 
halo, they had tapered to so small a point as to 
be scarcely visible. In those points of the 
halo, where they terminated, were luminous spots, 
or paraselenz : the two horizontal ones, or those 
situated in that part of the circle where the hori- 
zontal column of light ended, exhibited in the 
prismatic colours very beautifully, and each of 
them had a long tail proceeding from it, similar 
to that which I described on a former occasion, 
when mentioning the appearance of a phenomenon 
of the same kind. The luminous spot, or parase- 
lene, in that part of the halo immediately above the 
moon, was of a very faint colour, when compared 
with the two just mentioned, and the fourth one, 
a calm day such as this was, is not at all inconvenient. I had,, 
indeed, as pleasant a walk to-day, for upwards of an hour, as if 
1t had been in Hyde Park. 
M 4 
