28 Star ant) Weatbet (Boggtp 



I watched the star until shortly before seven, and 

 saw only an occasional vivid red flash, which con- 

 firmed my previous observations that as the Dog Star 

 nears the meridian its whiteness becomes more pro- 

 nounced. The general behaviour of Sirius, which so 

 amused my friend, may be explained by the uncommon 

 state of the atmosphere, for snow showers had swept 

 over my district the day long. 



When night at length fell, the atmospheric trans- 

 parency manifested itself in a brilliancy of the stars 

 such as I have rarely witnessed in this country. 



By eight o'clock, when the head of Aries was 

 lowering in the west, its brightest stars, Alpha and 

 Beta, were so lustrous as to momentarily lead me to 

 mistake them for Castor and Pollux. Nor do I ever 

 remember seeing the Hyades at a later hour so 

 close to the horizon. What an expanded group it 

 appeared ! So near had it approached that it seemed 

 to have penetrated the elevated sky-line with the 

 point of its " V," and was being held in an upright 

 position. 



The Pleiades, on a level with the Hyades, and a few 

 degrees to the right, shone quite undimmed by their 

 lowly elevation. Capella, above them, was beautiful 

 and brilliant, and so, also, was Arcturus, in the east. 

 Even Spica, at no great height in the south-east, 

 appeared large and luminous. The circumpolar stars, 

 including Vega, for that great sun never sets in my 

 latitude made the whole of the northern sky a 

 celestial picture of the grandest magnificence. 



Such was the transparent, star-filled sky of last 

 evening. Then there was that sunset, too ; those 

 great masses of blue -black cloud hanging heavily over 



