I was occupied all day with abstract calculations; and knowing that for some time I could see nothing of the Earth—­her dark side being opposite me and wholly obscuring the Sun, while I was as yet far from having entered within the sphere where any novel celestial phenomena might be expected—­I only gave an occasional glance at the discometer and metacompass, suppressing of course the electric glare within my vessel, till I awoke from a short siesta about 19h. (7 P.M.) The Earth at this time occupied on the sphere of view a space—­defined at first only by the absence of stars—­about thirty times greater than the disc of the Moon as seen through a tube; but, being dark, scarcely seemed larger to the eye than the full Moon when on the horizon.  But a new method of defining its disc was presently afforded me.  I was, in fact, when looking through the lower window, in the same position as regards the Earth as would be an inhabitant of the lunar hemisphere turned towards her, having no external atmosphere interposed between us, but being at about two-thirds of the lunar distance.  And as, during an eclipse, the Lunarian would see round the Earth a halo created by the refraction of the Sun’s rays in the terrestrial atmosphere—­a halo bright enough on most occasions so to illuminate the Moon as to render her visible to us—­so to my eyes the Earth was surrounded by a halo somewhat resembling the solar corona as seen in eclipses, if not nearly so brilliant, but, unlike the solar corona, coloured, with a preponderance of red so decided as fully to account for the peculiar hue of the eclipsed Moon.  To paint this, unless means of painting light—­the one great deficiency which is still the opprobrium of human art—­were discovered, would task to the uttermost the powers of the ablest artist, and at best he could give but a very imperfect notion of it.  To describe it so that its beauty, brilliancy, and wondrous nature shall be in the slightest degree appreciated by my readers would require a command of words such as no poet since Homer—­nay, not Homer himself—­possessed.  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