yellowish-brown or red colour--as that which had
fallen in a dry state on the occasions already referred to. The
strictest pains were taken to ascertain that it was not the common
dust swept from roads during a gale of wind; and when placed under the
microscope, it exhibited a greater proportion of fresh-water and
marine formations than the former instances. Phytolitharia were
numerous, as also 'neatly-lobed vegetable scales;' which, as Ehrenberg
observes, is sufficient to disprove the assertion, that the substance
is formed in the atmosphere itself, and is not of European origin. For
the first time, a living organism was met with--the '_Eunotia
amphyoxis_, with its ovaries green, and therefore capable of life.'
Here was a solution of the mystery: the dust, mingling with the drops
of water falling from the clouds, produced the red rain. Its
appearance is that of reddened water, and it cannot be called
blood-like without exaggeration.

Again, in March 1847, a coloured snow fell in the Tyrol, presenting a
most singular appearance, and, when dried, leaving behind a
brick-coloured dust. Most of the organised forms therein contained
were European and American, with a few African; and again the
microscope shewed it to be similar to the dust before examined,
leaving no room to suppose it of local origin. 'The predominating
forms, numerically, of one kind of dust, are also the predominating
forms in all the rest,' as Ehrenberg observes; and says further:
'Impossible as it is to conceive of all the storms now compared from
1830 to 1847, as having a continuous genetic connection, it is equally
impossible also to imagine the masses of dust transported by them,
with such a degree of similarity, _not to have a genetic
connection_.... The great geographic extent of the phenomenon of a
reddish dust nearly filling the atmosphere, and itself filled with
organisms so similar, many of which are characteristic of South
America, not only admits of, but demands a more earnest attention to
the probable cyclical relations in the upper and lower atmosphere,
whereby very great masses of fixed terrestrial matter, earths and
metals, and especially flint-earths, chalk, iron, and coal, apparently
heterogeneous, and yet related by certain peculiarities, are held
swimming in the atmosphere, now like clouds thinly spread by
whirlwinds or electricity over a broad space, and now condensed, and,
like the dust of the fir-blossoms, falling in showers in e