In a paper read before the Royal Asiatic Society in the spring of 1877, and printed in the tenth volume, new series (p. 344), of its Journal, a suggestion was made that the natural phenomenon known to Muslims of every clime as the “False Dawn” was no other than what is known in Europe by the name of “The Zodiacal Light.”

Through the liberality of the Society's rule by which a certain number of copies are furnished to the writers of papers printed in its Journal, this subject was brought to the notice of several of our most talented astronomers, in the hope that they might adopt a method of authoritatively settling the question, which is not only interesting to Orientalists as one of lexicology, but also to the astronomical world as involving a point in the archæology of their special science.