ul and exhilarating it
becomes towards that time. There is neither chilliness nor uncomfortable
heat; one feels a delightful sense of freedom and that it is good to be
alive. This is really the best and most enjoyable time on a summer's
day. On Mars there was rather more warmth but a greater sense of
exhilaration. Of course, from near noon to about 3 P.M. it was much
warmer.

Usually a lovely rosy effulgence is seen in the atmosphere in the
mornings and evenings. As a rule, sunrise and sunset effects are much
more ethereal and more beautiful than those on the earth, the tints
being more delicate and the whole appearance of the sky less broadly
marked. It is as the difference between the crude broad effects of a
coloured poster and the delicate effects of a highly-finished painting.

What, in our sunsets, would appear a deep golden colour appears on Mars
as a delicate pale gold, merging into bright silver. What with us is a
carmine or deep rose, in Martian skies becomes a beautiful rose-pink;
whilst the darker, or Indian, red seen for some time at the latter
period of our sunsets is carmine in the Martian sky, and Indian red only
appears just at the last.

These tints are seen when the skies are of their normal clearness, but
after the occurrence of a great sand-storm in the desert and the upper
air has become filled with fine sand particles, the Martian sunsets are
equal in variety and depth of colour to anything seen on our earth
during the months immediately succeeding the Krakatoa eruption. Those
strange and intensely coloured sunsets will doubtless be remembered by
my readers who had the good fortune to see them during the many months
when they were visible after that great volcanic outburst in the year
1883.

Sand-storms have been unusually prevalent on Mars during the present
summer, passing over large areas of country and obscuring the sun for
considerable periods; so we have had several phenomenal sunsets
afterwards.

As the time passed on the days became cooler--the evenings being
considerably more so than on our earth in August, and twilight was very
much shorter. Towards the end of the Martian August evening dews began
to be succeeded by slight hoar frosts.

The heat in the tropics is not nearly so intense as on the earth. On the
other hand, in the high latitudes near the poles, the summer temperature
is higher than in similar latitudes on the earth, because upon Mars
there is no permanent glaciation