sessed. What was strange, and can perhaps be
rendered intelligible, was the variation, or, to use a phrase more
suggestive and more natural, if not more accurate, the extreme
mobility of the hues of this earthly corona. There were none of the
efflorescences, if one may so term them, which are so generally
visible at four cardinal points of its solar prototype. The outer
portion of the band faded very rapidly into the darkness of space; but
the edge, though absolutely undefined, was perfectly even. But on the
generally rainbow-tinted ground suffused with red--which perhaps might
best be described by calling it a rainbow seen on a background of
brilliant crimson--there were here and there blotches of black or of
lighter or darker grey, caused apparently by vast expanses of cloud,
more or less dense. Round the edges of each of these were little
irregular rainbow-coloured halos of their own interrupting and
variegating the continuous bands of the corona; while throughout all
was discernible a perpetual variability, like the flashing or shooting
of colour in the opal, the mother-of-pearl, or similarly tinted
translucent substances when exposed to the irregular play of bright
light--only that in this case the tints were incomparably more
brilliant, the change more striking, if not more rapid. I could not
say that at any particular moment any point or part of the surface
presented this or that definite hue; and yet the general character of
the rainbow, suffused with or backed by crimson, was constant and
unmistakable. The light sent through the window was too dim and too
imperfectly diffused within my vessel to be serviceable, but for some
time I put out the electric lamp in order that its diffused light
should not impair my view of this exquisite spectacle. As thrown,
after several reflections, upon the mirror destined afterwards to
measure the image of the solar disc, the apparition of the halo was of
course much less bright, and its outer boundary ill defined for
accurate measurement. The inner edge, where the light was bounded by
the black disc of the Earth, shaded off much more quickly from dark
reddish purple into absolute blackness.

And now a surprise, the first I had encountered, awaited me. I
registered the gravity as shown by the barycrite; and, extinguishing
the electric lamp, measured repeatedly the semi-diameter of the Earth
and of the halo around her upon the discometer, the inner edge of the
latter affording t