Yesterday week (June 22) a curious shower of sand and
mud coming from the south, fell in Rome, which seems to be re- garded as due to sand brought in a dust-storm from the great Desert in Africa, being mixed with the pollen of some vegetable, and held in solution by the cloud which carried it. An artist, writing to the Times, says that yellow spots, of about a twentieth of an inch in diameter, were made on the paper on which he was sketching, and also—though the colour varied from yellow to white—fine drops of the same dimensions fell all about the neighbourhood of Rome. The cloud which brought it, though giving out little or no rain, turned the sun at 4 p.m. into the semblance of " a pale moon of greenish tint." Similar phenomena were no doubt mistaken for a rain of blood by the Romans, and regarded as prodigies ominous of coming evil.
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