£7 oe 
292 The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. 
the high mountains, and the iron region generally. The 
power of iron gradually and noiselessly to disarm the clouds, 
is strikingly exemplified by the following simple experiment, 
Take and insulate an iron rod through the roof of your house; 
bring it down to your chamber, and when the thunder storm 
comes within two miles of the rod, sparks of electricity may 
be drawn from the rod; connect the rod by a chain with the 
ground and the effect ceases, as the fluid passes impercepti- 
bly tothe earth. Now if such are the extensive eflects of a 
small rod in disarming the clouds and atmosphere of the elec- 
tric fluid, what must be the effect of those immense masses 
from the following well known facts, to wit; that south of 
the equator, the thunder storms are much more frequent and 
pole there is an open sea, at all seasons of the year. Without 
ployed in the whale fishery. And more particularly to the 
latter, who have penetrated still farther to the north than 
northerly, until it reaches the open sea near the pole where 
it rises in the vapor that constantly ascends from the watez 
im that region. That electricity ascends as well as descends. 
we 
