108 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



observations. Mr. Arctowski, in an address to the Royal Geographical Society, 

 published in its Journal^ called on northern meteorologists to see if there were any 

 correspondences between these Aurorse, Australes and Boreales, and it is, I think, 

 extraordinary that the Journal^ with which we exchange, should have lain on our 

 table for a month before I saw it, and that even then I should have been the first 

 to answer the appeal. But as our President remaiked, there is a sort of justice 

 about this affair, for it was to trace out magnetic similarities and differences in 

 the two hemispheres that the Toronto observatory was established, sixty years 

 ago, and it is to its admirable continuous work and the courtesy of its director 

 that this concordance of Arctic and Antarctic aurorte has now been determined by 

 a Toronto amateur. I need scarcely add that magnetic disturbances have also 

 synchronised with Arctowski's most brilliant aurorse. That synchronism as 

 regards our northern lights is treated of on page 352 of the memorial volume 

 above quoted from. We have thus additional proof of the cosmical bearing of 

 auroral phenomena and can mentally see the spectacle of earth, receiving electrical 

 discharges by means of cathode rays thrown off' during solar disturbances, and 

 lighted up around both poles with the lovely coruscations accompanying the 

 distribution of this electrical surplus. 



Is it permissible to enliven the course of a scientific discussion with the spice 

 of romance ? In the papers by Arctowski I noticed one dated at Liege, where a 

 daughter of mine was studying at the Conservatory of Music. I wrote, enquiring 

 if Liege were Mr. Arctowski's permanent residence, and received an answer that 

 she had the pleasure of knowing him, and she was going that evening to Madame 

 Arctowski's house. Did I know he had been lately married, and how it came 

 about? Supposing I did not, she would tell me the story. When the ship was in 

 the ice pack, the four chiefs of departments were in their little dark cabin, with 

 just light enough to see by, and they were amusing themselves by turning over for 

 the twentieth time the pages of year-old magazines. Subject for discussion — 

 which was the best looking girl of all whose portraits were figured there ? Each 

 made his choice and gave his reasons, and Arctowski, cutting out the picture of 

 an American then in Paris, put it in his pocketbook and vowed that if he lived to 

 get back to Europe, he would find that fair woman out and marry her. And so 

 he did. May the pair enjoy to the full the wedded bliss which had so strange an 

 origin ! 



Mr. Arctowski's letters were insistent on a further point. Were the 

 characteristics of the aurorae seen here at given dates similar to those which he 

 observed at corresponding dates in the southern hemisjihere ? He thought 

 Toronto was more homologous than any other station as to position with respect to 

 the northern magnetic pole to that which the Belgica had occupied with respect to 

 the southern. Observations of the aurorse here were unfortunately not in 

 sufficient detail to give an answer to the question, but 1 was able to obtain fifteen 

 or sixteen reports from the United States Weather Bureau which were of service in 

 establishing a presumption that it must be negative. At the date of an aurora 

 which Arctowski would describe as waving curtains of yellow light, the aurora 

 here would as often as not be seen as almost stationary auroral clouds. More 

 puzzling still, the aurora was not seen in equal brilliancy, of corresponding colour, 

 or of similar rapidity of motion in the different stations here from which it was 

 reported. In two of the instances given by Mr. Arctowski, there was a clear sky 

 in our latitude from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But the local distribution of the 

 aurorte observed was singular— in one case they were reported all over the north- 

 eastern States and our Maritime Provinces but were not seen west of Toronto 

 until the region was reached which in both the United States and Canada adjoins 

 the Rocky Mountains. In the other case the display was not seen east of Toronto 

 or far west of Minneapolis. I wrote a paper on this subject for the Royal Society 

 of Canada, as complete and as brief as possible, but that Society is very dilatory 

 with its publications and appears to care more for literature than science. The 

 fact is probable that atmospheric conditions, other than clouds, interfere with the 

 visibility of aurorse, and hence the erroneous opinion that because magnetic storms 

 are not everywhere accompanied by aurorse, the connection is not fully 

 established. It is, however, possible that longitude has something to do with the 

 location of aurorse, and that ArctoMski's " homologous " positions will have to be 



