SNOW. RED, the name given to snow of a red colour, which was found by Captain Ross at Baffin's Bay on the 17th August 1819. The mountains that were dyed red with the snow wera about eight miles long, and 600 feet high. The red colour reached to the ground in many places ten or twelve feet Jeep, and continued for a great length of time.
Although the red snow had not previously excited much notice, yet it had hcen long before observed in Alpine countries. Saussure discovered it on Mount Breven in 1760, and on Mount St. Bernard in 1778. Ramond found it on the Pyrenees; and Sommerfeld discovered it in Norway. In 1818, red snow fell on the Italian Alps and Appennines. In March 1808, the whole country about Cadore, Belluno, and Feltri, was covered with a red-coloured snow, to the depth of six and a half feet; but as white snow had fallen both before and after it, the red formed a stratum in the middle of the white. At the same time, a similar fall took place on the mountains of the Valteline, Brescia, Carinthia, and Tyrol. Another fall of red snow is stated to have occurred between the 5th and 6th March 1803, at Tolmezza in the Frioul, and a still more remarkable one on the night of the 14th and 15th March 1813, in Calabria, Abruzzo in Tuscany, at Bo logna, and over the whole chain of the Appennines. Red snow has also been found in New South Shetland.
Saussurc had round that the colouring matter of the red snow was of vegetable origin, and he supposed it to be the farina of some plant. The Italian naturalists found in the red snow, clay, an oxide of iron, with a considerable portion of some organized substance; and AI. Peschier of Geneva got the same ingredients in the red snow of Mount Bernard. Dr. Wollaston and M. Thenard obtained similar results.
The following is Mr. Peschier's analysis of red snow: In other specimens, the alumine was less, and in others there was none. In some there were traces of lime.
The botanists, however, have been more successful than the chemists. Mr. Bauer regarded the red mat
ter as a fungus of the genus uredo, and called it uredo nivalis. M. R. Brown was of opinion that it had a great affinity to the Tronella cruenta, while Sprengcl considered it as approaching near to the raucheria radteata.
In this state of the subject, Professor Agardh of Lund drew up a learned memoir on the subject, which is published in the Nov. .11ct. .Read. Nat. Curios, vol. xii. and of which a copious abstract has been publish ed by Dr. Hooker in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, No. vii. p. 167-173. The conclusion to which he ar rives is, that the red colouring matter " must either be an alga, or an animalcule', between which I know no certain limits. There are forms amongst them which may, with equal propriety, be ranked with either or both. There are Ogre, which become ani malcules, and vice versa. Lastly, there are infusoria, which, at one period of their existence, are endowed with the power of motion, while at another, they exist only in the state of a vegetable.
The colour of the red snow is not without analogy among the alga. In autumn, there is produced on shaded walls a green powdery substance, composed of globules, which afterwards, according to circum stances, change either into oscillatoria nzuralis, or into u/va crispa. This substance comes nearest to lepraria hermesina. It has also a great affinity with tremella cruenta, (Engl. Bot., and which must not be confound ed with ztiva montana of Lightfoot.) Both are red, and both consist of globules; but lepraria kermesina differs in this particular, that its globules are free, not sunk in a gelatine. I have accordingly placed leprariakernzesina of Wrangel in my .systema algarum, as a peculiar genus, under the name of kermesinus." An account of Batter's observations will be found in Brandc's Journal, vol. vii. p. 222, 229; Peschier's Analysis will be found in the otheque Universelle, vol. xii. p. 266. See Saussure's Voyages dans les ,Ilpes, tom. iii.