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.