Red Snow.

Manufacturer and Builder 4, 1881

On the 25th of last April there fell in the French departments, Basses-Alps and Isere, and abundant snow strongly tinged with red dust. The red matter was so abundant that from Barcelonette all the mountains looked ochery up to 2,800 to 3,000 meters. Above this the snow remained quite white. A notary of the place had a quantity of the snow collected, and, after fusion and filtration, sent some of the dust to M. Baubree, who found in it a large proportion of carbonate of lime, also mica and two felspars, one of them being orthoclase. The powder, then, had probably a terrestrial and not a cosmic origin; but it appears not to be volcanic, like the ash which has sometimes fallen in Scandinavia after Icelandic eruptions. It also differs from the sand of the Sahara, ofter carried great distances by winds. The point whence it came is still uncertain, but it is interesting to note that the some kind of substance had fallen in 1846, precisely in the same departments, and in 1863 in the Eastern Pyrenees. Showers of similar dust seem to have fallen in Saone-at-Loire on the 15th of April, and in certain parts of Algeria on the 24th.