NOVEMBER 293 



mean,' I heard a man say to his neighbour, 'that the 

 French and Germans 11 be having a great battle.' A 

 trivial remark perhaps, but one that was fixed in memory 

 when, a year later, I was reading Canon Tristram's Land 

 of Moab. It happened that the Canon was encamped on 

 that night in Moab, and beheld the same striking phenom- 

 enon in the sky as we enjoyed in the north. Not only 

 so, but he actually overheard his Arabs interpret it in 

 the self-same way that the Scottish peasant had done 

 namely, the reflection or forecast of a mighty battle 

 between the two great nations then at war. 



The date of another notable display of aurora is fixed in 

 my recollection in this way. On October 18, 1865, when I 

 was a lad, I was travelling to Ayrshire, and heard on the 

 way that the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, was dead. 

 That night there was a magnificent aurora, to which 

 Aytoun's stanza seems pertinent. 



' All night long the northern streamers 



Shot across the quivering sky, 

 Fearful lights that never beckon 

 Save when kings or heroes die." 



Of the physical agency in this beautiful phenomenon no 

 authoritative explanation seems to have been made. 

 There is a general tendency in scientific circles to lay it 

 upon electricity, that broad back which has been made 

 to bear so many burdens, such as headaches, sulky trout, 

 water-divining, and so on ; but, although the aurora is 

 usually accompanied by magnetic disturbance, these are 

 by no means invariable. Nor has the spectroscope solved 

 the problem, for the spectrum usually given by the aurora 

 consists of a single line in the greenish yellow, which does 

 not coincide with the spectrum of any known gas. 



