GLOWING SKIES OF NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER, 1S83. 565 
to the zenith — and all this in a sky perfectly cloudless, for days and nights in 
succession. One marked feature, which I have noted, has been a zone of intense 
blue, about 35° above the horizon, and most conspicuous directly over the place 
of the Sun, both morning and evening. Directly above this zone, and opposite 
the Sun, appeared a gathering darkness, in a pyramidal shape, with base toward 
the Sun. Nor has this last appearance been confined to twilight. I have had 
occasion on a number of the fine days of the last few weeks to observe the bright 
star Alpha Lyrae, when on the meridian, the culmination usually occurring about 
2 o'clock of Valley Time. On two of these evenings, looking up, vertically, into 
the cloudless heaven, from the darkened transit-room, through the slit in the 
roof, this same condensation was obvious, following the Sun — as if there were 
myriads of faintly illumined and minute bodies in the upper atmosphere The 
^£?;7;>^/«r^ that this phenomenon is due to the presence of "meteoric dust" in 
the upper regions of air, is not to be despised. That the Earth's orbit intercepts 
various meteor streams is a well known fact in astronomy. It is possible that we 
may have passed through such a stream in daylight, and have only the slowly 
descending ashes of countless myriads of " shooting stars" to remind us of the 
fact. It is reported that explorers in the Himalayas have recently found on the 
ice and show, far from any human habitation, large deposits of this ferruginous 
dust. It has sometimes settled down on ships, far out at sea, and must either 
have come from the "upper depths," or else have been borne by wind currents 
hundreds of miles from distant volcanoes. But this whole subject needs numer- 
ous accurate observations and much patient investigation. 
C. W. Pritchett. 
Professor Brooks, of the Red House Observatory, while searching for a 
comet near the Sun, November 28th, discovered a wonderful shower of telescopic 
meteors, some of which were moving southward and others northward. Prof. 
Brooks believes that this display has some connection with the remarkable red 
light seen near the sun at sunrise and sunset for several days, and that the earth 
is passing through a mass of meteoric dust or is enveloped in the tail of a gigan- 
tic comet. 
The Scientific American, noticing Professor Brooks' theory that it was caused 
by "swarms of meteors " in the upper sky, which the professor saw while look- 
ing tor a comet, says : 
Assuming, then, that he really did see an extraordinary swarm of meteors, 
and remembering that meteors large enough to be visible without telescopes, and 
some of great size and brilliancy, have recently been unusually numerous, the 
suggestion that the red light seen in the sky for several evenings past, long after 
sunset, may be caused by reflection from clouds of meteoric dust in the upper 
portion of the atmosphere is not unnatural. There are several reasons for think- 
ing that the strange light is the result of some such cause as the presence of 
