Meeson. — On the recent Sun-glows. 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 31st— 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 rilts 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 



* Misprint for " third." The exact date was the 18th September. — [Ed.] 



