Mzzsox.—On the recent Sun-glows. 871 
gun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured 
ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly 
lurid and blood-eoloured at rising and setting. Al the time the heat was 
so intense that butchers’ meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was 
killed ; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered 
the horses half frantic, and riding irksome. The country people began to 
look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the sun; and 
indeed there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive, 
for, all the while, Calabria and part of the Isle of Sicily were torn and con- 
vulsed with earthquakes, and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of 
the sea on the coast of Norway.” 
And Cowper in the “Task” describes the same appearances (Task, 
Book ii.). 
4 Sure there is need of social intercourse, 
Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, 
Between the nations in a world, that seems 
To toll the death-bell of its own decease, 
And by the voice of all its elements 
To preach the gen’ral doom. When were the winds 
Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? 
When did the waves so haughtily o’erleap 
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry ? 
Fires from beneath, and meteors from above, 
Portentous, unexampled, unexplain’d, 
Have kindled beacons in the skies, and th’ old 
And crazy Earth has had her shaking fits 
More frequent, and forgone her usual rest.” 
From another source (‘‘ Nature,” 17th July) I hear that extraordinary 
sunrises and sunsets in that ‘year lasted for eleven months, and have been 
attributed by Arago to volcanic dust, for besides the volcanic activity to 
which the Vicar of Selborne refers in the letter mentioned, there were, it 
appears, in 1783 tremendous eruptions of Asama Yama, in Japan, and 
Skaptar Jokul, in Iceland. Mrs. Somerville, Sir C. Lyell, and Sir J. 
Herschell all refer to the latter event, and the last named says that on that 
occasion 21 cubic miles of lava were ejected from the crater. Again, 
similar phenomena were observed in Europe and America in 1831, and at 
first when this fact was disinterred from historical archives or recalled by 
human memory, it was stated that that year was memorable for no parti- 
cular eruption. But a quotation from Nile’s Register, 81st October, 1831, 
given in “ Nature” of May last, puts a different aspect on the case. It 
says that on 7th August preceding, there occurred a violent eruption off the 
coast of Sicily, during which Graham's Isle was formed : two days later the 
sunsets began to be very lurid and remarkable, the glow extending to the | s 
