ically, of course," the Weather Man said, "the sun has gone
below the horizon at least two minutes before you see it disappear.
You're looking at a sun that isn't there at all. That's due to
refraction. The reason of the pink glow is that when you see it, the
earth and the air for several thousand feet above you are in the shadow
of the edge of the earth. The sun, therefore, is not shining on the
thicker dust of the lower part of the air, but the finer dust of the
upper part, the particles of which are small and more uniform in shape.

"The glow is of a rose-color because the particles are of the size to
diffuse the rays of this wave-length. That's why rose colors appear in
the east, before the west, and why the color lasts in the sky, which may
be reflected on dust twelve miles high, after it has disappeared from
the upper clouds, which are not more than eight miles high."

"'Tis the illigant hand ye are at explainin'," put in the Irishman, "but
I c'n remember, when I was learnin' me trade, about thirty-four years
ago, the sunsets were much finer than annything I've seen since. We
don't have such sunsets now as when I was a boy."

"They were sho' brighter," agreed Dan'l. "Ah can remember when the skies
used to look like they was all burning up. Ah thought the end of the
world was a-comin', sho'!"

"Thirty-four years," said the Forecaster thoughtfully; "that would be in
1883, wouldn't it? Why, of course, Mike," he continued; "that was during
the period of the famous Krakatoa sunsets."

"An' what's a Kraker-something sunset?" the printer asked.

"Krakatoa," the Weather Man explained, "was a volcano, near Java. In
August, 1883, one of the most violent eruptions in the history of the
world occurred. Half the island was blown up in the air, and, where a
mountain had stood, the ocean rolled a thousand feet deep.

"The vibrations in the air were so terrific as to break windows and
overturn frame houses over a hundred miles away, and the pressure wave,
like some huge blast of wind, traveled round the world three times
before it died down. The huge sea-waves caused by the eruption and the
engulfing of the island, swept across the oceans, destroying the coasts
for hundreds of leagues around. Over thirty thousand people were
drowned.

"Pumice and ashes fell over the sea so thickly that within three miles
of the island you could walk on them, and even five hundred miles away,
the ashes formed a scum on the surface of the s