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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



anxious to get away from them. The Fu- 

 egians in Paris are described as accustomed 

 to squat for hours, without moving, around 

 a fire on the lawn, perfectly indifferent to 

 everything, and listlessly looking at the 

 crowd who peer at them through the bars 

 of the fence as if they were some extraor- 

 dinary animals, and as occasionally exchang- 

 ing with each other the guttural duckings 

 which serve them for a language. Only one 

 thing will excite liveliness in them the de- 

 sire for food. 



Forms of Aurora Borealis. Lieutenant 

 Weyprecht, in his recent work on the ob- 

 Bervation of the aurora borealis, distinguish- 

 es between seven forms in which the light 

 appears in the polar regions. The first form 

 is that of almost regular arches rising or 

 sinking from the magnetic south or north 

 to or away from the zenith, and generally 

 extending to both sides of the horizon. Sec- 

 ond, are streamers of irregular form and 

 varied appearance, appearing like bands 

 much longer than broad, moving in the at- 

 mosphere, and nearly always bent in folds 

 and twists ; they consist either of masses of 

 light unequally distributed along the length 

 of the band, or of single beams of the 

 breadth of the band closely arranged to- 

 gether in a direction toward the magnet- 

 ic zenith, and having their intervals filled 

 with light-masses. This form is cut away 

 on every side, or at most touches the hori- 

 zon on only one side. Of the third form are 

 threads, extremely fine beams of light of 

 various lengths, some of them reaching from 

 near the magnetic zenith to near the hori- 

 zon, and grouped in such a manner as to 

 resemble a fan covering a part of the firma- 

 ment. The beams are not united, but are 

 separated by dark spaces of greater or less 

 width. Generally, they are prolongations of 

 a streamer, which in such case answers to 

 the continuous lower border of the fan. 

 Fourth, is the corona, in which the beams 

 or light-masses are joined in a common cen- 

 ter near the magnetic zenith, and a constant 

 movement is maintained toward or around 

 the same. Fifth, haze dim, unformed ac- 

 cumulations of light-masses illy defined, at 

 some point in the firmament. Sixth, the 

 dark segment, a darker appearance, form- 

 ing a segment of a circle, in the magnetic 



north or south, bounded by a fixed and low- 

 seated bow of light. Seventh, the polar 

 shine, an illumination of the polar sky, the 

 form in which the light generally appears in 

 middle latitudes, but which is not observed 

 in its home. Its characteristic feature is 

 that the rays diverge from the horizon up, 

 while the divergence in all the other forms, 

 if their rays can be distinguished, is in the 

 reverse direction. The movements of the 

 mass consist either of a rising and sinking 

 of the rays and arches with reference to the 

 horizon, a lengthening, and shortening, and 

 sidewise motion of the threads, or a general 

 change of place. The mass has also mo- 

 tions within itself, which may consist of 

 undulations or flashes of the light. The 

 undulations are waves, streamers, or partial 

 arches, which pass along generally from the 

 magnetic east or west, toward the opposite 

 end of the phenomenon, and then appear 

 to spring out from it. The flashes are the 

 shooting of short, broad beams, with the 

 velocity of lightning, from the streamers 

 toward or from the zenith. They are the 

 forerunners or accompaniments of intensive 

 coronas, and originate in particular when a 

 stream of rays merges into the corona. 



Wyville Thomson. The death of Sir 

 Charles Wyville Thomson, in the fifty-fourth 

 year of his age, is announced. He was born 

 in Linlithgow, Scotland ; began his medical 

 training at Edinburgh University in 1845 ; 

 held a Lectureship on Botany at King's Col- 

 lege, Aberdeen, in 1850 ; and has occupied 

 professorial chairs in science at King's Col- 

 lege, Cork, Belfast, and Edinburgh, where 

 he succeeded Professor Allman as Professor 

 of Natural History in 1870. He has con- 

 tributed many papers of merit to scientific 

 societies and periodicals, beginning with ono 

 on the application of photography to the 

 compound microscope, which was read be- 

 fore the British Association in 1850. His 

 most distinguished service, and one by which 

 he won an enduring fame, was as Director 

 of the Civilian Scientific Staff of the Chal- 

 lenger Expedition, where he gave unremit- 

 ting personal attention to the dredging op- 

 erations, and the examination of specimens. 

 He had been for some time in feeble health, 

 and his death followed his becoming severely 

 chilled on a visit to Edinburgh. " Sir Wy- 



