128 CELESTIAL PHENOMENA. 



beauty when a small fleecy cloud is projected against the 

 Zodiacal light, and detaches itself picturesquely from the 

 illuminated back-ground. A passage in my journal during 

 a voyage from Lima to the West Coast of Mexico, notices 

 such a picture. "For the last three or four nights (be- 

 tween 10 and 14 of North latitude), the Zodiacal light 

 has appeared with a magnificence which I have never before 

 seen. Judging also from the brightness of the stars 

 and nebulae, the transparency of the atmosphere in this 

 part of the Pacific must oe extremely great. Prom 

 the 14th to the 19th of March, during a very regular in- 

 terval of three-quarters of an hour after the disk of the sun 

 had sunk below the horizon, no trace of the Zodiacal light 

 could be seen, although the night was perfectly dark ; but 

 an hour after sunset it became suddenly visible, extending 

 in great brightness and beauty between Aldebaran and the 

 Pleiades, and, on the 18th of March, attaining an altitude 

 of 39 5'. Long narrow clouds, scattered over the lovely 

 azure of the sky, appeared low down in the horizon, as if in 

 front of a golden curtain, while bright varied tints played 

 from time to time on the higher clouds : it seemed a second 

 sunset. Towards that side of the heavens the diffused light 

 appeared almost to equal that of the moon in her first 

 quarter. Towards ten o'clock, in this part of the Pacific, 

 the Zodiacal light usually becomes very faint, and at mid- 

 night I could see only a trace of it remaining. On the 

 16th of March, when its brightness was greatest, a mild 

 reflected glow was visible in the east." In the obscurer 

 sky and thicker atmosphere of our so-called temperate zone, 

 the Zodiacal light is only distinctly visible in the beginning 

 of spring, when it may be seen after evening twilight above 



