THROUGH THE YEAR 225 



myself that it was not some vast starry body. It 

 was easy with glasses to see that there was no glow 

 about this strange intruder on the realms of Orion. 

 Moreover, it belonged clearly to our atmosphere, 

 and was, I think, not very high above the sea. In 

 a few minutes it passed through several changes in 

 form. I pointed it out to other people in the house. 

 They were sure it must be a comet ; and were only 

 shaken when they saw it pass into fresh forms. 

 It was quickly thinned into a far more attenuated 

 form than it had worn when I first saw it. The 

 wispy tail began to fade. Parallel with the horizon, 

 but now well above Betelgeux, the mighty red sun in 

 Orion, it lay in a long, narrow, almost straight 

 band; thence it bent down at nearly a right angle, 

 and again appeared as a straight narrow band. At 

 the end of this second state the disappearing tail 

 could be seen twisted back again towards the Hare 

 constellation under Orion. 



A few minutes, and this form, too, began to wear 

 out. The final form was a gigantic letter V, lying 

 sideways across the sky, its point directed west. Now 

 the light was failing, and at eight o'clock when I 

 looked out again, not a trace of the V could be seen. 

 Cirro-stratus cloud is worked up into fantastic 

 forms, especially these horizontal, straight-line forms. 

 Smoke from steamers, too, will hang about at sea in 

 calm evenings, and wreathe itself into strange shapes. 

 This must, I think, have been the train or cloud left 

 on the track of a meteor ; though of the meteor itself 

 I saw nothing. 



