The marvellous sunsets which have lately been common all over the world
have led to a mass of correspondence and conjectures upon the part of
scientific men. Perhaps the fullest and most interesting contribution
to the literature of the subject is the long article contributed to
the _Times_ by Mr Norman Lockyer, who, with many others, is disposed
to attribute the phenomena to the presence in the upper regions of the
atmosphere of a vast quantity of volcanic dust, the outcome of the
terrible eruption—one of the most terrible ever recorded—which took
place at Krakatoa in August last. In corroboration of this hypothesis,
another correspondent calls attention to the circumstance that similar
phenomena were observed in 1783, and are recorded in White’s _Selborne_
as follows: ‘The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and
shed a rose-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of
rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and
setting. The country-people began to look with superstitious awe at
the red lowering aspect of the sun; and indeed there was reason for
the most enlightened person to be apprehensive; for all the while
Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with
earthquakes, and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on
the coast of Norway.’