368 RURICOLA ON TttE AURORA UOREALIS. 



Before these phenomena were so frequent among us as they now are, it 

 was no unusual thing for the common people to take them for armies 

 lighting in the air." 



I am aware that the noise, which is said sometimes to accompany 

 this meteor, is not at all times observable. Thus Captain Parry, in 

 his third voyage for the discovery of a north west passage, chap. 3, 

 relates, " We frequently listened for any sound proceeding from this 

 phenomenon but never heard any ;" and accordingly the fact has not 

 only been questioned, but the possibility of it denied. The testimony 

 of other eye-witnesses, however, is certainly in favour of its sometimes 

 emitting a noise. The experience of Professor Celsius has been stated 

 above ; to which I would annex the following from the Quarterly 

 Review, vol. xix. p. 316; " Dr. Henderson says, 'when they are par- 

 ticularly quick and vivid, a crackling noise is heard, resembling that 

 which accompanies the escape of the sparks from an electric machine.' 

 Sir Charles Giesecke, who had frequent opportunities in Greenland of 

 observing them streaming forth with peculiar brilliancy, has remarked 

 that they sometimes appeared very low, when they were much agitated, 

 ' and a crashing and crackling sound was heard like that of an electric 

 spark or of the falling hail.' Gmelin gives a most terrific account of 

 the effects of the Aurora Borealis on the borders of the Icy Sea : ' All 

 the animals are terror-struck, the dogs of the hunters are seized with 

 such dread, that they crouch on the ground, while the streams of bril- 

 liant light in every tint of the rainbow, ' crackle, sparkle, hiss, make 

 a whistling sound, and a noise equal to that of artificial fireworks.' 

 ' I have frequently,' says Hearne, a plain unostentatious traveller, 

 ' heard them making a rustling and crackling noise like the waving of 

 a large flag in a fresh gale of wind.' " These statements give proba- 

 bility to the opinion, that the Aurora Borealis was the appearance 

 noticed at the time of Caesar's death. But however this be, that the 

 phenomenon has been often recorded by our own annalists seems indis- 

 putable. 



Should any of your readers be disposed to peruse a poetical descrip- 

 tion of the Aurora Borealis, and of the superstitious terrors that have 

 been excited by it, they may be gratified by turning to a passage of 

 thirty-five lines in Thomson's Autumn, beginning, " But when half 

 blotted from the sky," &c. ; where, however, by representing it as an 

 " appearance beautiful and new," the poet falls into the popular mis- 

 take which we have been now considering, 



Holy wood, Ireland, June, 1833. 



