Some Meatbet portents 107 



"followed by a long continuation of fine weather, with 

 only occasional high north or westerly winds to mar 

 the tranquillity." Mr. Dove, writing from West 

 Devonport, Tasmania, says : " Here we do not expect 

 disturbances after coronse, only after the great halos." 



In Humboldt's Personal Narrative there is the 

 following reference to these phenomena : " Coloured 

 circles around the moon are much more rare in northern 

 countries than in Provence, Italy, and Spain. They 

 are seen particularly (and this fact is singular enough) 

 when the sky is clear and the weather seems to be 

 most fair and settled. Under the torrid zone beautiful 

 prismatic colours appear almost every night, and even 

 at the time of the greatest droughts ; often in the space 

 of a few minutes they disappear several times, because, 

 doubtless, the superior currents change the state of the 

 floating vapours, by which the light is refracted. I 

 sometimes even observed, between the fifteenth degree 

 of latitude and the Equator, small halos around the 

 planet Venus ; the purple, orange, and violet were 

 distinctly perceived ; but I never saw any colours 

 around Sirius, Canopus, or Achernar." 



The solar halo, with us in London, is an appearance 

 of some rarity. What it implies in a weather sense is 

 not at all certain ; I have known sunshine to follow 

 one of them and storm to succeed another. Mr. 

 Charles W. Marten, of Stoke Newington, has informed 

 me that when at Filey, during the summer of 1914, an 

 old fisherman remarked to him that he expected the 

 weather to break up very shortly. Why ? he was 

 asked. " Because I saw a wheel round the sun at 

 break o' day," he replied. Such an apparition, in the 

 opinion of this Man of the Sea, always meant the 



