There can now be little doubt but that the green and blue suns and exceptional sunsets observed in Europe, India, Africa, North and South America, Japan, and Australia, were due to the Krakatoa eruption. The enormous volume of volcanic dust and steam shot up into the higher atmospheric zones by this convulsion are adequate to furnish the chromatic effects above mentioned. But we have better evidence still: these peculiar solar effects followed a tolerably straight course to one which was in fact chiefly confined to a narrow belt near the equator; the data now collected show that on the second day after the eruption they appeared on the east coast of Africa, on the third day on the Gold Coast, at Trinidad on the sixth, and at Honolulu the ninth day. Finally, in a paper read by Dr Douglas Archibald at the late British Association meeting at Montreal, it was stated that ‘observations showed that the dates of the sunglows began _earlier_ in Java, then apparently spread gradually away, the dust being so high as to be in the upper currents, of which we know little. These sunset glows were not seen before the eruption.... The dust appeared to have travelled at a uniform rate, over two thousand miles daily.’ ‘The topic,’ says Mr S. E. Bishop, writing from Honolulu, ‘is an endless one. Many ask what is the cause of frequent revivals of the red glows, such as the very fine one of August 19. It seems merely to show an irregular distribution of the vast clouds of thin Krakatoa haze still lingering in the upper atmosphere. They drift about, giving us sometimes more, sometimes less, of their presence. It is also not unlikely that in varying hygrometric conditions the minute dust-particles become nuclei for ice crystals of varying size. This would greatly vary their reflecting power, and accords with some observations of Mr C. J. Lyons, showing that the amount of red glow varies according to the prevalence of certain winds.’ Further facts are coming to hand respecting this great natural convulsion. FOOTNOTES: [1] The eruption of May was noticed in a previous article (Nov. 24, 1883). BY MEAD AND STREAM. CHAPTER LV.—SWEET ARE THE USES OF ADVERSITY. Soon after reading Mr Shield’s letter, Madge walked to Ringsford with Pansy. There had been a thaw during the night, and the meadows and the ploughed lands were transformed into sheets of dirty gray, dirty blue, and reddish slush, according to the character of the soil, dotted with patches of snow like the ghosts of islets in a lake of puddle. But the red sun had a frosty veil on his face; by-and-by this puddle would be glazed with ice, and the heavy drops of melting snow which were falling slowly from the trees would become glittering crystal pendants to their branches.