POLAU LIGHT, OR AURORA, 185 



at the limits of the atmosphere, but in the region of clouds : 

 they even believe that the rays of the Aurora may be moved to 

 and fro by winds and currents of air ; and this may be the case, 

 if the luminous phsenomenon which manifests to us the pre- 

 sence of an electro-magnetic current, be actually connected 

 with groups of vesicles of vapour in motion ; or, to speak 

 more exactly, if it traverses the group, darting from one 

 vesicle to another. Franklin saw an Aurora near Great 

 Bear Lake, the light of which appeared to him to illuminate 

 the under surface of the stratum of cloud ; while, at the dis- 

 tance of only eighteen miles, Kendal, who was on watch all 

 night, and never lost sight of the sky, observed no luminous 

 phseuomenon whatsoever. In respect to the statements re- 

 cently made from several quarters, of rays of the Aurora being 

 seen to shoot down in close proximity to the Earth, between 

 the observer and a neighbouring hill, it must be remembered 

 that, as in the case of lightning and of fire balls, there is in 

 several ways danger of optical illusion 



Whether the magnetic storms manifested by Auroral 

 display (of which we have just noticed one instance remark- 

 ably restricted in respect to locality) share with electric 

 storms the phenomena of sound as well as of light, has be- 

 come extremely doubtful since the accounts of Greenland 

 whalers and Siberian fox-hunters have ceased to obtain im- 

 plicit confidence. The Auroras have become more silent since 

 observers have better understood how to observe them, and 

 how to listen for them. Parry, Franklin, and Richardson 

 near the north magnetic pole, Thienemann in Iceland, 

 Giesecke in Greenland, Lottin and Bravais near the North 

 Cape, Wrangel and Anjou on the Siberian coasts of the 

 Polar Sea,, have together seen thousands of northern lights 



