224 AUGUST. 



This glowing month frequently presents 

 splendid appearances in the highly electric- 

 clouds. In August 1827, I was walking in the 

 country early in the morning. The sky was 

 perfectly clear till the sun rose above the hori- 

 zon. The country was then gradually obscured 

 by a thick haze, which about an hour afterwards 

 soared steadily but rapidly aloft, leaving the 

 landscape as clear as before, but filling the sky 

 with an unbroken expanse of motionless cloud. 

 I returned in the evening; the heavens and 

 earth exhibited a magnificent spectacle. The 

 landscape possessed a striking lustre and clear- 

 ness, and was brought, as it were, immediately 

 to the eye by that effect of transparent vapour 

 which often precedes thunder-storms. The 

 vault of heaven was strewn with what are called 

 horse-tail clouds, some white, drawn out like 

 webs of some light and transparent texture, 

 suddenly seized and tossed about by a giant 

 hand, and curling up at their extremities like 

 tempestuous and foamy billows. In the west 

 the setting sun cast up his lines of radiating 

 beams to the zenith, which appeared to be 

 answered in the east by corresponding radia- 

 tions of black lines, which crossed the clouds 

 directly into the higher heavens. These vanish- 

 ed with the sun. The heat of the atmosphere 

 during this time was intolerable, and the eve- 



