102 



SECULAR 



BOREALIS. 



Northern countries more frequent, and seems to me to be what our modern philosophers 



call Aurora Borealis." 



I suggest, in this connection, whether the following extracts from Winthrop's His- 

 tory of New England * do not indicate the appearance of an aurora in New England 

 at a much earlier date than that ascribed to it by Dr. Holmes and others. u About 

 midnight three men, coming in a boat to Boston, saw two lights arise out of the 

 water, near the north point of the town cove, in form like a man, and went at a small 

 distance to the town, and to the south point, and there vanished away." " The like 

 was seen by many a- week after." In the description of the second case, it is added : 

 " A light like the moon arose about the northeast point in Boston, and met the former 

 at Nottle's Island, and there they closed in one, and then parted and closed and parted 

 divers times, and so went over the hill in the island and vanished. Sometimes they 

 shot out flames and sometimes sparkles." These luminous appearances occurred on 

 the 11th and 18th of April, 1643. 



Many of this generation, accustomed as they have been to frequent displays of the 

 aurora, will read with surprise the statement that the aurora was observed for the first 

 time in New England in 1719, with the possible exceptions just quoted from Win- 

 throp's journal. For the inference is, that no aurora, or at least no conspicuous ex- 

 hibition of it, had occurred here before, since the settlement of the country. The 

 people of New England were too much inclined to exaggerate every unusual phe- 

 nomenon in the heavens to have overlooked or been silent in regard to a spectacle so 

 strange as the aurora, had they had the opportunity of beholding one. That the 

 aurora had been equally uncommon in Old England during the century previous to 

 1719, appears from the fact that the great astronomer, Dr. Halley, was, as he says, 

 dying to see one, and that he expected to die without seeing it. At last the oppor- 

 tunity came, on March 17, 1716, when Halley was sixty years old. In his description 

 of it, he says : f « This was the only one I had as yet seen, and of which I began to 

 despair, since it is certain it hath not happened to any remarkable degree in this part 

 of England since I was born." He adds that the like is not recorded in the English 

 annals since 1574, or for one hundred and forty years. It was then seen on two suc- 

 cessive nights, November 25 and 26. It was also seen at London on February 10, 

 1560, and on October 18, 1564. Notwithstanding this infrequency of the aurora in 

 England for a long period prior to 1716, John Huxham observed it at Plymouth, 

 England, in eighty-one instances between 1728 and 1748.J The Philosophical Trans- 



Vol. II. pp. 152, 153. 

 X Amer. Journ. of Sri.. 



t Phil. Trans., XXIX. 416 



