121 



ANOTHER VIEW OF EDUCATION IN PRIMARY 

 SCHOOLS. 



By Gilbert Frederick Ayers. 



{Not printed.) 



AURORA AUSTRALIS.-:\Ir. C. Stewart, B.Sc, Secre- 

 tary of the Cape Meteorological Commission, contributes to 

 the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Metco7V)logical Society 

 (October, 1910, pp. 384 — 386) an account of various appari- 

 tions of the Aurora Australis in South Africa during the last 

 forty years. He mentions, apropos of Mr. Stead's observa- 

 tion of the aurora at Bloemfontein in September 1909 (see \^ol. 

 6 of this Journal), p. 68), that similar displays have been 

 witnessed in South Africa in an even lower latitude than that 

 of Bloemfontein, namely, at the Vaal River Diggings, in lati- 

 tude 28° 30' south. The display alluded to occurred on the 

 23rd and 24th October, 1870, and on the 24th and 25th of that 

 same month a splendid display of auroral light was visible in 

 England. That occurrence was described by Dr. R. J. Mann 

 in a note printed in the Proceedings of the Meteorological 

 Society (Vol. 5, p. 281). Mr. Stewart takes occasion to draw 

 attention to a letter of Mr. E. J. Stone, who was Sir David 

 Gill's predecessor as Astronomer Royal at the Cape, which 

 was published in Nature of April 4, 1872, and described an 

 aurora of unusual splendour, which was seen at the Royal 

 Observatory in the Cape Peninsula, and as far north as Bloem- 

 fontein, on the 4th February-, 1872, and far surpassed in bril- 

 liance the phenomenon observed fifteen months earlier. Simul- 

 taneously with the display of southern lights recorded by Stone,, 

 a magnificent avn"ora borealis was witnessed over a zone ex- 

 tending from Siberia and Greenland as far south as Bombay, 

 Syene (Upper Egypt), and Florida. The southern aurora was 

 likewise seen at the same time in Australia and Mauritius. Mr. 

 Stewart also quotes Angot's reference to no less than 34 

 auroras recorded at Hobart, Tasmania, between 1841 and 1848, 

 everyone of which was contemporaneous either with similar 

 auroral displays in Europe, or (if in the day time) with impor- 

 tant magnetic perturbations in the northern hemisphere. An 

 auroral display was noted at Port Elizabeth on May 15, 1871;., 

 and from one to five days later in various parts of Europe. 



