The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-01-13

llOb lihcly W NC COllNeIlcu 0ucIcliOu
whatever another may say, the
public gencrally-to whom adj
dress this article--are pretty nearly
tired of that idea, and about ready
to listen to other and more plausi-
BILE propositions. At first, nothing
would go down with hardly any per-
son but Krakatoa dust, and the least
hint to the contrary was Immediate
ly pooh-poohed. But the sunsets
have continued, and the supposed
heights to which the dust must of
necessity have been at the first
elected, have had, at every reappcar-
ance, to be readiusted, until at last
the dust theory becomes like unto
Macbeth's Amen and sticks in the
public's throat. 1t is about year
ago since l first publicly disputed
the dust business, not that | enter
tanned from the first the idea that it
could be the cause of the ruddy
glows, but because l had 10 other
proofs until then of what supposed
was the cause. In February, 1854,
| wrote letters to q couple of Cana
dian newspapers, and in those let
tiers briefly pointed out what-in q
more extended form-follows. The
various theories propounded to ac-
count for the afterglows are, first,
that of Loclyer and his followers.
These-an eruption proving almost
coincident-set down the cause as
volcanic dust elected from Mount
Krakatoa during an eruption in
August, 1888. A special commit
tee of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science-approving
of Lockyer's idea-also set to work
to determine the question. They be-
gan with foregone conclusion and
so declared in favor of dust, but
as was owned by them in my hearing
at Montreal last summer-they have
not thus far been able to find any
positive proofs as to their theory.
Secondly, Mr.. w. R. Brooks, the
comet seeker, of Phelps, n. Y, has
theory of his own. He thinks that
his last comet (the Pons-Brooks)
discovered on the night Of Septem-
Der 2nd, 1883, or about the time
that the ruddy sunsets were first
conspicuous, may have switched the
earth's atmosphere with its tail and
left us q portion Of it as legacy.
But we are at present quite without
proofs that comets tail is anything
more than electrical, and probably it
is not capable of producing the effect
in question. Thirdly, there are
others that assure us that the ruddy
sunsets are the result of an extra
amount of meteoric dust in the
earth's zone, finding its way into our
atmosphere, but were this true,
meteors might have been expected
to have been unusually prevalent,
but this has not been the case.
Fourthly, a man not satisfied with
any earthly solution of the difficulty
strikes in with q wild, far-fetched
idea that the cause is in the sun
itself, which luminary he describes
as at present burning copper ore,
and that the sunlight is in consc-
quence colored red by the ores com
bustion. Every one of these ideas
/ reject, and lean to far simpler
cause, neutrality-suspicious. material
at great heights in our atmosphere,
frozen to ice prisms, which reflect
the SUMS rays after he has set TO the
lower world. Last winter, l noticed
that parhelias or mock suns -
were frequently coincident with the
rosy glows, and my weather observer
in Virginia, during the month OF
August last, reported mock sun and
ruddy sunset as going hand in hand
No one, l presume, is willing to dis
pute that parhelias are nothing elsc
than the result of icy particles, ant
if coincidcnt, as they certainly hav'
been, are doubtless twin children o
the same mother, viz. :-aqucou
yapor in the upper strata of the air
Observations on the planet Venus a
San Francisco whilst that orb OF low