MzEsox. —Un the recent Sun-ylows. 363 
made exact memoranda myself of the earliest displays nor can I find any- 
one who did. In these, as well as in other matters, one does not recognize 
the importance of recording observations till the opportunity of doing so 
has slipped by. Then we see what useful work in any locality an observa- 
tory can do, and how desirable it was for us to get our local meteorological 
instruments into actual work. We may now congratulate ourselves that in 
the future the dates of the more remarkable and patent meteorological facts 
will be found at Bishopdale without difficulty. ‘ 
On turning over the file of our local evening paper I find the first sunset 
that was thought worthy of a paragraph to itself—or, indeed, of any notice 
at all—was on the 29th December. The issue of the 8lst—the last day of 
the year—mentions the glow of the 29th as ‘‘ the most gorgeous of the 
many that have excited admiration of late.” This display was at its best 
at 9 o’clock, and half an hour afterwards had almost entirely disappeared. 
But certainly for three months before this date we had become familiar with 
the spectacle. I have a distinct impression that we had witnessed it several 
times before the middle of October. Our vice-president, Mr. Atkinson, 
whose astronomical studies would make him likely to record or remember 
with accuracy the dates of the earliest appearances, states his conviction 
that it was as early as the 1st October or the last days of September. 
But our secretary, Dr. Hudson, assures me that he can fix the date of 
one very early display as Monday, 17th September, and he thinks this 
was not the first. I find what notes I did make confirm this record, and 
so am able approximately to give the date as Saturday, 15th September. 
Dr. Hector, on the 14th November, before the Wellington Philosophical 
Society, states “ that the extraordinary coloured glow in the sky had been 
visible every clear night and morning since the first* week in September, 
proving the existence at an enormous altitude of some vapourous matter 
capable of refracting the sun’s light into its prismatic components. He had 
observed, to his surprise, on several evenings that through rifts in the 
vapour masses crimsoned in the ordinary way by the sun after it had set, a 
back-ground of intense greenish blue was visible. After all the ordinary 
sun-tints had faded, this blue changed to orange-pink, and graduated off 
through the various prismatic tints to a magnificent crimson spanning over 
what appeared to be cloudless sky considerably to the eastward of the 
meridian. This spectacle gradually faded with the advance of nightfall, but 
lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes after the ordinary twilight tints had faded.” 
I have quoted this at length, to embody in my paper an accurate and 
graphic description of phenomena, which we all well remember, but more 
especially because of the date given for their first appearance. In the table 
x 
* Misprint for “ third.” ‘he exact date y 
E "H1 
vv 
