4 



AEscellantes. 339 



each other, as at Montreal and Dartmouth College, at New York, 

 ^t Cincinnati, and on the waters of the Mississippi. By the kind- 

 ness of our correspondents, we have been furnished with numerous 

 detailed and interesting descriptions of the phenomenon, which we 

 are obliged reluctantly to postpone for want of room. The facts de- 

 serve to be fully collated and compared with the accounts of similar 

 occurrences, (of which there are a great number recorded in histo- 

 ry,) with the hope and expectation of arriving at the true cause of 

 the Aurora Borealis. For the present, however, we are compelled 

 to confine ourselves to a statement of the leading facts, as observed 

 by Professor Olmsted, at this place, (Yale College,) and published 

 in the New Haven Daily Herald of Nov. 18th. 



" Last night, our northern hemisphere was adorned with a display 

 of auroral lights remarkably grand and diversified. It was first ob- 

 served at 15 minutes before 7 o'clock, (mean time,) when an illu- 

 mination of the whole northern sky, resembling the break of day, 

 Was discernable through the openings in the clouds. About 18 

 degrees east of north, was a broad column of shining vapor tinged 

 with crimson, which appeared and disappeared at intervals. A 

 westerly wind moved off the clouds, rendering the sky nearly clear 

 by 8 o'clock, when two broad white columns which had for some 

 time been gathering between the stars Aquila and Lyra on the west, 

 and the Pleiades and Aries on the east, united above, so as to com- 

 plete a luminous arch, spanning the heavens a little south of the 

 prime vertical. The whole northern hemisphere, being more or less 

 illuminated, and separated from the southern by this zone, was 

 thrown Into striking contrast with the latter, which appeared of a 

 dark slate color, as though the stars were shining through a stratum 

 of black clouds. The zone moved slowly to the south until about 9 

 o'clock, when it had reached the bright star in the Eagle In the west^ 

 and extended a little south of the constellation Aries in the east. 

 From this time, it beo^an to recede northward, at a nearly uniform 

 rate, until 20 minutes before II, when a vast number of columns, 

 white and crimson, began to shoot up, simultaneously, from all parts 

 of the northern hemisphere, directing their course towards a point a 

 few degrees south and east of the zenith, around which they arranged 

 themselves as around a common focus. The position of this point 

 was between the Pleiades and Alpha Arietis, and south of the Bee, 

 having a ridu ascension of 42° and a declination of 24°, as nearly as 



