276 



NA TURE 



[July 17, 1890 



triple rainbow of dazzling brightness. Had I not known 

 that my eye was the centre of the exquisite sight, I must 

 have judged the house, or rather its shadow, to be its central 

 point. This I disproved by moving from east to west of 

 the house, when the whole " glory" seemed displaced. I 

 did not succeed in projecting my own shadow upon the 

 mist, and in producing the effect myself ; the " glory " re- 

 mained attached to the shadow thrown by the house. I 

 observed the same atmospheric effect several times after- 

 wards while there, but never with such brilliancy. 

 Another time I was struck on observing a magnificent 

 ring round the sun, accompanied by other lesser rings. 

 The sun was then in the east, about 14° above the horizon, 

 and exactly over the peak of the Kleinen Sonnblick, at 

 no great distance. The solar ring was 23^° radius, and of 

 indescribably brilliant prismatic colours. At both ex- 

 tremities of the horizontal diameter was a lesser coloured 

 sun of radiant brightness ; but the strangest part of it 

 was that I could see the lower portion of the vertical 

 diameter of the solar ring, although it was more than 

 7° below the horizon. And now there appeared a 

 lesser sun of dazzlingly white appearance, seeming as 

 though rising behind the mountain peak ; its dazzling 

 whiteness rayed out high up into the heavens, forming, as 

 it were, a column of light resting upon the Kleinen Sonn- 

 blick. On passing a horizontal line through this white 

 secondary sun below the horizon, I found at a distance of 

 23^° to right and left of it, two coloured lesser suns, which, 

 being also below the horizon, were projected on to the 

 snow-fields of the Kleinen Sonnblick, and of the Gold- 

 berg-Spitze, forming a magical effect — indeed, the whole 

 spectacle was one of entrancing beauty. 



One lovely moonlight night, I was standing in front of 

 the house, making observations with the scintillometer. 

 After a time I was conscious of a series of rapid obscura- 

 tions flitting over the field of my telescope. Looking up 

 irritably, I perceived that small portions of the mist, which 

 reached almost to the summit of the mountain, were being 

 detached and borne swiftly over my head. My irritation, 

 however, was quickly dispelled on looking at the moon 

 through these icy veils of mist. Whenever a fleecy 

 cloudlet passed between the moon and me, there was a 

 gleam and lustre of rainbow hue with such intense 

 brilliancy of the lunar surface that I had never seen the like 

 before. I leave my readers to imagine the effect of this 

 ever-changing moon, now of silver lustre, now iridescent 

 with many-coloured rings, and they will understand that 

 I quite forgot my interrupted observations in the ab- 

 sorbing sight. 



The zodiacal light I saw there also, and more brilliantly 

 than ever before. I cannot do better than recommend any 

 one who is a lover of aerial effects to pass a winter on the 

 Sonnblick. And perhaps the finest sight of all is the 

 magnificent view — the grand panorama to be seen 

 from such a height. The view from the Sonnblick, even 

 on a fine summer's day, must be a sufificient reward for the 

 toil of the ascent ; on a fine day in winter it surpasses all 

 description. The clearly marked horizon, on which there 

 is no trace of mist or haze, the mountain ridges, even to 

 I he most remote, standing out in lines of perfect distinct- 

 ness from the sky — the grandeur of the whole snow-clad 

 scene is so overwhelming, that I could but express my 

 surprise to Rojacher and his assistant, that no members 

 of the Alpine Club had availed themselves of the 

 hospitality of the house on the Sonnblick, to know 

 and enjoy the delights of a fine winter's day on the 

 Hochgebirge. Formerly the difficulty would have been 

 that without shelter one could only have stayed a few 

 minutes on the summit, and had the weather been 

 unfavourable in those few minutes, the whole ascent 

 would have been fruitless. But now that there is shelter 

 on the summit, and a house so comfortably arranged, the 

 whole difficulty is done away with. I have a strong 

 conviction, moreover, that the ascent in winter is easier 



NO. 108 1, VOL. 42] 



than in summer — given a normal winter with average 

 snow-fall. It is far less fatigue to ascend steep places and 

 cross glaciers on a moderate layer of new-fallen snow ; 

 one does not become so heated, and consequently 

 breathing is not so difificult as in summer. And then, 

 the infinitely finer view. 



I am convinced that it can only bs the inconvenience 

 of leaving their business or professional callings at that 

 busy season that has hitherto kept men back. So 

 fascinated was \ with the view, that I determined to 

 advise all whose duties would permit them to pass a few 

 winter days on the Sonnblick— the more surely that I can 

 vouch for Herr Rojacher's hospitality removing all doubts 

 on that score. 



If phenomena of light most pleased the eye, other 

 meteorological conditions gave me fuller scope for 

 observation. In the first place, the height of the 

 clouds. For the most part, unluckily, we were in 

 them. Often we were above them, and had then 

 the grand sight of the vast sea of cloud surging and 

 swaying beneath us, now rising, now falling, called Nebel 

 boden or Boden nebel. Several times, for days together, 

 only those mountains whose peaks were higher than 

 8200 feet rose above the clouds ; and we would be 

 walking about in bright sunshine, while the valleys 

 beneath were filled with cloud. At other times 

 the northern valleys would be quite clear, and the 

 southern ones full of cloud, or vice versd. One evening 

 we had the southern valleys a mass of cloud, the next 

 morning, on looking out, they were perfectly clear, and 

 the northern ones were thickly enveloped. It was as if 

 the clouds had travelled over the Alps in the night from 

 south to north. 



With the exception of the cirri, I never saw clouds 

 above us. These are easily traced to their source from 

 the Sonnblick. They were more unwelcome to me even 

 than the mist ; they disturbed my observations to such 

 an extent. 



It is known that the cirri take their rise from the 

 depression centres. Thus they were servieeable to me in 

 determining the situation of the minimum pressure of the 

 air. Nearly the whole of my stay on the Sonnblick 

 depressions formed with curious persistency over the 

 Tyrrhenian sea, passing over southwards. This was 

 distinguishable to us by a heavy bank of cloud in the 

 extreme south-west, whence the cirrus bands stretched 

 out in our direction. With a change of depression to 

 south-east, or east, the radiating point of the cirri shifted 

 accordingly. We had nothing to fear from the southern 

 depression ; in fact, it in no way affected the weather on 

 the Sonnblick. But if the cirri rose from the north-west, 

 although from the extreme distance the heavy cloud 

 bank was not visible to us, none the less were we certain 

 within six to twelve hours that storm and mist would be 

 the invariable consequences. 



In the many violent storms I witnessed there, I 

 directed my attention chiefly to two questions : Do 

 the winds blow in gusts here on the summits of moun- 

 tains, standing free as they do in the atmosphere ? and 

 What is the relation of the gusty winds to the "pumping" 

 of the barometer ? I had formerly been somewhat of 

 opinion that on these free heights there was no 

 sufficient cause for storms to blow in gusts ; and in 

 fact in storms from the south-west the gusts appeared 

 to me to be considerably less than in Vienna, although 

 fully perceptible. But with a gale from the north they 

 far exceeded in violence anything on a lower level. I 

 have no time to go more closely into this question, and 

 will only briefly describe those of my observations which 

 bear upon the " pumping " (" oscillations ") of barometers 

 during a storm. It is a subject that has been much under 

 discussion of late ; I will confine myself to my obser- 

 vations. I made use of four instruments — a mercurial 

 barometer, a very fine Naudet's aneroid, a Richard's 



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