seen in London, September 25, 1827. 411 



ourselves inhabitants of ^the Northern hemisphere ; and the 

 relationship of the Aurora to the wants of the whole hemi- 

 sphere is more extended, perhaps, than we have commonly 

 imagined. It is even a contradiction to say, as in the eleventh 

 sentence, that we see only the extremities, that is, the 

 Southern extremities of these Northern phenomena, after 

 having said, in the fifth sentence, that ** they often cover the 

 whole heavens, and then make the most brilliant appearance ;" 

 unless, indeed, in both of these remarks reference is made to 

 the spectacle beheld under more Northerly parallels, a refer- 

 ence which is further suggested, together with their apparent 

 origin, in the terms of a description by Gmelin, to be cited 

 below, of the Aurora as beheld upon the coasts of the Icy Sea: 

 If the Aurora, there, or upon the banks of the Lena or Yenesei, 

 is seen to rise in the north, but yet to stretch itself over the 

 whole hemisphere, it must follow, that its ** extremities," that 

 is, its southern extremities, so far from being all that is seen in 

 these situations, are really projected, on those occasions, so 

 far to the southward, as to escape the ken of our northern 

 optics f a fact of which the explanation must be familiar, 

 inasmuch as, owing to the convexity of the surface of the 

 globe, the horizon of every part is narrowly bounded, whether 

 upon the South or upon the North; whence it results, that 

 any celestial, or even atmospherical appearance, stretching 

 only a httle way beyond us to the Southward, or toward the 

 East, or toward the West, must soon reach the horizon upon 

 either of those sides, and thus cover all that, to the eye 

 of any individual, is visible of the '* whole hemisphere." 



6, But the description, by Gmelin, of the Aurora, as seen 

 upon the shores of the Icy Sea, and more than all, the simpli- 

 city with which the naturalist is disposed to fix its birth-place 

 in that precise interval of the earth's surface which divides the 

 mouth of the river Yenesei from that of the river Lena, in the 

 North-east of Asia, (a spot so far to the North-eastward, too, of 

 our own!) while it may possibly explain the origin or bearing 

 of remarks, that it " sometimes covers the whole hemisphere, 

 and then makes the most brilliant appearance," will also 

 afford something of an answer to such as, with the writer 

 quoted above, seeking to connect the Aurora Borealis with th^ 



