ressed to Professor Matteucci, on a most singular phenomenon which
occurred at Siena in December last. On the 28th of that month, about
seven A.M., the inhabitants of the northwestern part of the city
witnessed with surprise the curious phenomenon of a copious fall of rain
of a reddish hue, which lasted two hours; a second shower of the same
colour occurred at eleven A.M., and a third at two P.M., but that of the
deepest red fell the first time. But what adds to the strangeness of the
occurrence is that it was entirely confined to that particular quarter
of the town, and so nicely was the line drawn that the cessation of the
red colour was ascertained in one direction to be at about two hundred
metres from the meteorological observatory, the pluviometer of which
received colourless rain at exactly the same time. The temperature
during the same interval varied between 8 deg. and 10 deg. Centigrade
(46 and 50 Fahrenheit). The wind blew from the S.W. at the beginning of
the phenomenon, and afterwards changed to W.S.W. None of the rural
population in the immediate vicinity of Siena remarked the occurrence,
so that most probably the rain that fell round the town was colourless.
The same phenomenon, strange to say, recurred in exactly the same
quarter of the town on the 31st of December, and again on the 1st of
January, the wind being W.N.W., and the temperature respectively 35 and
39.42 deg., Fahrenheit. Each time, however, the red colour diminished
in depth, its greatest strength having at no time exceeded that of weak
wine and water. A similar occurrence is recorded as having taken place
in 1819 at Blankenburg, when MM. Meyer and Stopp found the water to
contain a solution of chloride of cobalt. Professor Campani, who is now
engaged, in conjunction with his colleague, Professor Gabrielli, in
analyzing the red water collected, has ascertained that in this instance
it contains no chloride of cobalt, and, moreover, that the colour must
be owing to some solution, since the water has deposited no
sediment."[71]

The occasional occurrence of large masses of water stained of a vivid
red hue, and for the most part suddenly, and without any ostensible
cause, has not unreasonably been recorded as a prodigy, rivalling one of
the plagues of Egypt--the turning of the waters into blood.

"I remember," says Mr Latrobe, "the report reaching Neufchatel, through
the medium of the market-people passing from the one lake to the other,
(some