328 METEORS. 
have never seen them so manifest and so numerous. 
Our slide, a polished surface of clear ice, hecame 
clouded in a few minutes, and before five o'clock it 
was perfectly white. The microscope gave me the 
same broken hexagonal prisms, mixed with tables 
closely resembling the snow-crystal. A haze sur- 
rounded the horizon, rising for some six degrees in a 
bronzed, purple bank; after which it gradually blend- 
ed with the sky, a clear blue, undisturbed by cirri. 
"Accompanying this redundancy of atmospheric 
spiculae was a parhelion of remarkable intensity. 
There was no halo round the sun, and no vertical 
or horizontal column; but at the distance of 22° 04' 
from the sun's centre were three solar images, one on 
each side, and the other immediately above the sun. 
This latter image was intensely luminous, but not 
prismatic; the others had the rudiments of an arc, 
highly colored, the red upon the inner margin. The 
haze rose as high as these horizontal images ; and the 
arc, which in so short a segment presented no visible 
curvature, expanded as it descended, so as to form an 
elongated pyramid or column, the prismatic tints in- 
creasing in intensity as they approached the horizon. 
The effect of this was that of two illuminated beacons 
or rainbow towers, the sun blazing between them. 
As we stood a little way off on the ice, it was very 
beautiful to see the brig, with its spars and rigging 
cutting like tracery against the central light, with 
these prismatic structures on each side, capped by a 
spectral sun." 
Two evenings later, the parhelia gave us another 
spectacle of interest. Two mock suns, which had ac- 
companied the sun below the horizon, sent up an il- 
luminated and colored arc some eight or ten degrees 
