4)4 Description of the Aurora Borealis 



Icy Sea, follow the chase of the blue and white foxes, are often 

 overtaken in tlieir excursions by the Northern Light; and, upon 

 this occurrence, their dogs are so much frightened, that they 

 will not move, but cower obstinately upon the ground till the 

 noise is over. The weather, after the appearance of the 

 Northern Light, is usually clear and calm. I have heard these 

 accounts, not from one person only, but from many of those 

 who have spent several years in these very Northerly regions, 

 and inhabited different countries from the Yenesei to the 

 Lena, so that no doubt of its truth can remain ; for here 

 §eems to be the real birth-place of the Aurora Borealis." 



8. Upon this statement itself, it is only needful to remark, 

 that the rising of the pillars in the North-east, or to the East 

 of North, rather than to the North-west, or West of North, 

 almost at the same time with their first appearance in the 

 North, is not, perhaps, even as seen between the Lena and 

 Yenesei, so uniformly the case as M. Gmelin may have been 

 led to believe ; and that, at all events, as above described, the 

 progress of the late display, observed in London, was, first from 

 North to West, and afterward from West to East; the North 

 being always the centre, or always light, while the West and 

 East were changed. The covering of the whole sky, and the 

 splendour of the scene produced, have been the subject of pre^ 

 vious remark ; and the observation, " that the streams (pre-s 

 viously called pillars) are then seen meeting together in the 

 zenith," entirely corroborates what the present writer has said of 

 the nature of the lights seen skimming across the zenith, and 

 across each other, and the deduction which he has thence made, 

 that the luminous appearances in the zenith are the summits 

 of those very pillars of which the bases are on or below the 

 horizon. The clear and calm weather which, on the shores of 

 the Icy Sea, commonly follows the appearance of the Aurora 

 is, in some degree, in concord with the phenomena of its 

 recent appearance in London; where, without any material 

 change in the temperature, a succession of clear, calm, and 

 bright days supervened, within a day or two of the Aurora. 

 As to the hissing, crackling, or rushing noise, which is said 

 to accompany the Aurora in the more northern regions, and 

 which has sometimes been compared to that of the furling and 



