68 History of Nature. [BooK II. 



Sight of all the People. And there are two Sorts of them. 

 One is Lampades, which they call plain Torches ; and the 

 other, Bolides, or Lances, such as the Mutinians saw in their 

 Calamity. They differ, in that those Lamps or Torches form 

 long Trains, of which the forepart only is on Fire. But 

 Bolis burneth all over, and draweth a longer Tail. There 

 shine out, after the same Manner, certain Beams, which 

 the Greeks call Docus ; which appeared when the Lacede- 

 monians, being vanquished in a Sea-fight, lost the Dominion 

 of Greece. The Firmament also is seen to open ; and this they 

 name Chasma. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



Of the strange Colours of the Shy. 



THERE appeareth in the Sky also a Resemblance of 

 Blood 1 , and (than which Nothing is more dreadful to 

 Mortals) a burning, falling from Heaven to Earth : as it 

 happened in the third Year of the hundred and seventh 

 Olympiad, when King Philip terrified all Greece. And 

 these Things I suppose to come at certain Times by Course 

 of Nature, like other Things; and not, as the most Part 



1 Showers of blood have been recorded in chronicles of various ages ; 

 and in those turbulent times it was never difficult to find some public 

 evil which such unwonted phenomena might be supposed to have fore- 

 told. By modern inquiry these appearances have been ascribed to the 

 excrements of a mighty swarm of butterflies to the extraordinary abun- 

 dance of an animalcula, called Oscellatoria Vubesuns and to the red 

 vegetable Protococcus Nivalis, swept up by winds from the snow, on which 

 it naturally grows. None of these explanations, however, appear to an- 

 swer so completely to Pliny's account, as the following; to which the 

 Editor was once a witness. On the 15th of February, 1837, when the 

 weather had long been damp, misty, and rather windy the direction of 

 the wind being South of West at a quarter of an hour after five in the 

 evening, there came in a mist, of a bright red colour ; which attracted 

 attention, through a window, by the glare of light it diffused. On pro- 

 ceeding to examine it in the open air, it was observed to have become of 

 a pink colour ; and presently passing into violet, it settled into a grey ; in 

 which tint it remained until the evening hid it from view. No refraction 

 of sunbeams can be allowed to account for this appearance ; for the sun 

 had long before been hidden by intervening hills from the valley in 

 which this beautiful coloured mist appeared. Wern. Club. 



