Aurora Borealis below the Clouds. LSé 
the pencils or streamers was much broader, and the lights 
less condensed into one place, disappearing in some com- 
partments, and extending to others alternately. They play- 
ed over several belts of the stratus clouds, and intervening 
clear spaces of sky; and were seen, without diminution of 
lustre or change of tinge, on the face of the former. <At 
poth sides of this space, there were some of the thin irregu- 
lar lower clouds, behind which some of the pencils passed 
sometimes at one or other of their extremities, sometimes at 
their middle part. In such cases, their continuity instantly 
disappeared ; for although the light of the more brilliant ones 
shone through these clouds, it was only in a white nebulous 
form, without any parallelism of rays, as seen in the pencils 
when not so obscure. 
About twenty minutes after the aurora was first seen, 
dense clouds with curled edges were rather thickly formed 
over both the spaces occupied by it, of larger extent than 
they were; and although the observations were continued 
till half-past 12 o’clock, the meteor was not again seen in 
the same spaces; but about a quarter to 12 o’clock, a com- 
paratively small space of bright nebulous aurora, without de- 
fined pencils, was seen very near the horizon, at WNW. 
That too disappeared ; and in the mean time, the clouds in 
all parts of the sky, by degrees, dissolved ; the lofty stratus 
ones more slowly than the others. At half-past 12 o’clock 
only a few remained at the SE., when the observations were 
discontinued. 
During the continuance of the aurora, two bright shooting 
stars descended above the space at NW., in paths parallel to 
the streamers ; that is, to the dipping needle. They were of 
slow motion, and became invisible when passing over the 
belts of stratus clouds, but emerged again after passing 
them. Ata quarter to 12 o’clock, a shooting star as large 
as Venus, at her greatest elongation, shot from near the 
zenith, a little to the eastward of the magnetic meridian, and 
descended in a path parallel to that circle, disappearing 
while passing behind some stratus clouds, but not quite, 
while doing so, behind some low irregular ones that lay in 
its course. Its motion was slow, and fitfully interrupted. 
