LATER MAURITIUS NEWS.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 160, 28 August 1886, Page 4

LATER MAURITIUS NEWS.

t V' V" ''. . Adelaide, 'August 9. The M.M.S, Caledonien, from Mauritius, brings the follewing late Mauritius news : — 1 f ; J '" " ' 3?ort Louis, July 23. An o^eii* rupture' has occurred between ' Sir. John , Pope I .Hen > nessey H an& .Mr ' Clifford L. Lloyd,, the' Lieutenant-povernor and , C.plpnel { Secretary. r r jp,he ,Gs£eniO|'ithreatens toptpceed .'^ suspension. E\;ery thin,gisat sixes and. s^y.erjs.'^he^xpend^tureo^SSS exceeded WOTJ?" I^ ,*3ty. ,^^9p»^oo rupees, 1 but the, true, figures njiuet come.out in a, few, #fe M\ %% e aTO o^;Veckless expenditure the money market.., ( , ;i<stjy t! (Lj] \,. . ;ii .

, , The. Red Sunsets.

The occasional reappea'ranee of the' red sunsets this spring (falls 'nearly with thedate of the publication . of one of the Warners prize essays { on -the subjects. This one is by H. C. Maine, and is the only one awarded to an American, writer, &n& also, the only one which does not lefer the phenomenon directly to the great eruption of Krakatoa.' This occurred, it will bo remembered, on the 26th of August, 1883. The red light was first v observed in the succeeding autumn j It was soon suggested that the two events were related, and so. much has been printed in support of this view that its general features are too; familiar to need repetition. Mr Maine pro- 1 duces a very different* hypothesis, and bases, his explanation' on sun storms. ;

Noting, -first, that at the time of the xed sunsets the sun had. a halo with the irregular borders, which showed by day an ashen or salmon tint and shaded into the sky,' while the halo usually seen has well-defined borders and prismatic tints, Mr Maine then gives a list of dates on which there were unusual displays of sun' spots, and shows they were almost immediately followed by peculiarly noticeable displays of the red light. After about a 1 year the peculiar halo disappeared; the sun waa nearly free from spots, and the red sunsets ceased. After a few days, however, more sun spots were, seenj and the red sunsets followed. The. record certainly shows close correspondence 1 between the appearance of sutt spots- and that;of the red light, though, the red light was not constant during the period through which the peculiar halo persisted. " This," says Mr Maine, '" indicates that there must be several factors to produce the sunset phenomena." Among these elements he reckons vapour of water and dust from, Krakatoa.

This vapour and dust, however* must, in * ©rder to produce the effects eeen in the red sunsets, remain suspended at an unusual height in the air. The intense activity of the sun for the past few years would, it is said, supply the conditions necessary "4o raise the vapour by added heat and electrical action to an enormous height." The same conditions in the sun which make this possible have also, he says, tended to increase immensely the extent of the nebulous coating of the sun. A mass of vapour, probably blazing hydrogen, has been seen to shoot to a distance of 200,000 miles before it faded from view m the spectroscope. Clouds of this kind have been photographed. Mr Maine also deduces from the retardation of Encke's comet during certain perihelioa passages a further argument in favour of th« temporary enlargement of the sun's gaseous envelope.

Then he comes to his conclusion, which is that the violent solar eruptions ot the past five years have " so loaded and extended the solar envelope that the nebulosity has become visible " 'The disturbances in the sun may have affeete.d our atmosphere so aa to render the fciui's envelope visible through rapour at an enormous height, and this condition may also have exaggerated, to our viow, the halo about the sun. Reaching this general conclusion, Mr Maine then brings together varibuscauses.to each of which he is willing to allow some weight, in the following statement; : <% Given this coroDa or envelope (about the sun) with sufficent density toward its outer edge to reflect the sunlight, and we have the rose-coloured arch, with its bright spot, ryhich followed the sinking of the sun with tne brilliant reflection in the east ; also the sunrise effects, which were quite as notable. Given this corona, and the character of the punset would change from day to day through the changing condition of the vapour and possibly volcanic dust in our atmosphere was heavily laden with vapour and possibly dust from Krakatoa, the arch would be lost in the orange-red glow of the gorgeous sunsets, as oh November 27, ISS3, and later dates. When the dust had settled, if it was ever in our atmopphere, at the latitude of New York, the ro«y arch would persist as it did, and the corona would also remain by' day. The arch was projected on our atmosphere ; but when both dust and vapour were at a minimum, the arch alone was seen with a faint rose colour This colour is tbe one that might be expected from the character of the vapour (mostly hydrogen) in the pun's envelope or corona." Sun spots have had so much to answer for that it is not etrange to find something more charged to rheir account. In this instance it is a very beautiful phenomenon, and so differs from most of their other alleged works. But even here it must be remembered that if the sun spots are directly connected with the appearance of the red light as above set forth, they are also just ac intimately related to the storme, tornadoes and violent electriqaldisturbances which have come, closely following the appearance of the sun spots, and have frequently interrupted the ordinary succession of red sunset 3. Meantime, a good many scientific men still cling co the explanation through volcanic dust and vapour of water. Mr Maine's hypothesis may or may not bo finally accepted, but his paper is none the less a valuable and interesting contribution, to the study of the rod light.-— "Hartford Courant," June 15.