AURORA BOREALIS. 



NEW THEORY. 



Many theories have been proposed during the last century, to 

 account for the nature and appearance of this beautiful pheno- 

 menon, but to each of these, and to all, objections have been made, 

 that I think cannot be justly applied to the following, which has 

 been founded on a long series of observations made carefully by 

 myself on this interesting subject, and under circumstances pecu- 

 liarly advantageous. 



Before I proceeded on my voyage of 1818, my attention was 

 directed to the phenomenon of the Aurora by the late Dr. Wollaston, 

 who had collected, with great pains, much information on the 

 subject, which he kindly transmitted to me, as well as his own 

 observations, from which, however, he came to no other con- 

 clusion than a supposition that " the Aurora was beyond the 

 atmosphere of the earth." 



As the expedition which I commanded in 1818 did not winter 

 in the Arctic Regions, my observations during that voyage were 

 confined to the months of September and October, during which 

 time the ships were moving in a southerly direction from the 



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