546 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
gravel show damp. I noticed a thermometer in the garden standing 
at 32. It was well placed for shelter from the sun; hut it was within 
a few feet of two brick walls, one of them the end wall of a forcing- 
house. Could that affect the thermometer? The ground — grass, 
gravel, and earth — remained hard all day. I noticed neither rain 
nor snow. 
The only local peculiarity on the occasion that I can remember 
was that the gardener was burning rubbish, off and on, all the fore- 
noon between us and the bow. There was no smoke that I noticed 
after eleven, but there must have been a good deal of heat rising 
from the red ashes. This was close to the house, say 100 yards at 
most. The bow had all the appearance of being distant ; but had it 
not been seen here (and no doubt elsewhere) there might have been 
room for suspicion of this appearance being a deception perhaps. 
By Mr Buchan. 
The rainbow described by Sir Eobert Christison at meeting of the 
Eoyal Society was observed by us from the north windows of the 
Scottish Meteorological Society. The above is a rough sketch of it 
made at the time. 
The eastern limb of it rested on the tops of the houses of Leith 
Street, against what appeared to be a smoke-like cloud, precisely 
similar to what often accompanies the aurora. It was on this 
portion only of the phenomenon that the following points were 
noticed : — 
1. Spurious Bows . — Two such bows, very distinctly marked, were 
seen within the primary bow. The first spurious bow was separated 
from the primary by an intensely black band the width of the 
spurious bow itself, while this spurious bow and its black band were 
together equal in breadth to the primary bow. The second spurious 
