132 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE, 



there will be blood. A hundred and twenty years later, in 1736, familiarity had 

 deprived auroral phenomena of their terrors, and Father Aulneau, writing from 

 Fort St. Charles, among the Crees, near the north-west angle of the Lake of the 

 Woods, merely says : — 



" I have noticed on several occasions, especially while on Lake Huron, grand 

 displays of the aurora borealis . . . scarcely a night has passed but the northern 

 skies have been all aglow with it." 



It is improbable that many of us, who have seen some auroral glories, or at 

 least read about them, would be given over to such abject folly as our forefathers, 

 but to populations who take literally the imagery of the Sacred Book of Revela- 

 tions and look for the actual, physical happening of the poetical prophecies of its 

 author, who beheld the heaven depart as a scroll when it is rolled together, and 

 heard angels sound on trumpets signals for hail mingled with blood to fall upon 

 the earth, and for a great star to fall from heaven, blazing as it were a lamp, and 

 who saw other spirits pour out vials upon the earth, and the sea, and the streams, 

 and the sun, and the air, when there was a great earthquake, and the cities of the 

 nations fell, and every island fled away and the mountains were not found — to 

 such, I say, the sky, luridly red behind light drifting clouds, may cause mortal 

 fear, and so may the fiery arch with flaming coruscations, slowly moving to and 

 past the zenith. Nothing dissipates such terrors more efficiently than travel and 

 scientific study, which are necessary to the growth of civilization, as foreseen by 

 another prophet, Daniel, who said that "many shall run to and fro and know- 

 ledge be increased." The car of Science is as merciless as that of Juggernaut. It 

 leaves as victims behind it not the bleeding corpses of votaries, but the lesser 

 miracles, which it destroys one after another, leaving glorified the one great 

 miracle of all, the wonderful order of nature, the living world, which is dying^ 

 daily but daily being resurrected in obedience to the law of its being. With the 

 six literal days of creation vanishes also the one single day of judgment, and the 

 sudden end of things, and we shall ere long hear that the one has no more Divine 

 warrant than the other. But while there still exists a lingering faith that heavenly 

 displays are signs and portents, science may be charitable to those who look at 

 them in the spirit of Bernard of Morlaix, who was perhaps dreaming of a northern 

 aurora when he wrote of the bona patria in his wave-crested dactyls — 

 " Est tibi consita laurus, et insita cedrus hyssopo : 

 Sunt radiantia jaspide moenia, clara pyropo. 

 Hinc tibi sardius, inde topazius, hinc amethystus 

 Est tua fabrica concio ccelica gemmaque Christus." 



Every one now knows that the aurora is a manifestation of terrestrial mag- 

 netism and that both are intimately related to solar activity. But we can estimate 

 the rapid progress of modern science and the length of its recent travels along the 

 pathway of solar radiations bj^ reflecting that some of us, in this very hall, have 

 heard that as there could be no action at a distance without a medium, no electrical 

 energy could be transmitted from the sun to the other bodies in his system. No- 

 body denies, to-day, that there is a medium we have agreed to call the ether ,^ 

 whose qualities we are beginning to comprehend, nor is there any further denial 

 of a direct rectilinear radiation of energy from the sun. The proof of this action 

 of the sun upon other bodies was given in our semi-centennial volume of " Tran- 

 sactions," page 345. Another step was taken here and noticed at page 107 of our 

 " Proceedings" for 1901, where the synchronism of aurorse australes and boreale& 

 was shown, which entitles aurorte to be classed among cosmical events. The bold 

 theory of Dr. Gilbert, one of Queen Elizabeth's physicians, that the Earth is a 

 great magnet, though scouted by Bacon, as was the Copernican system, too, and 

 though it slumbered from its birth to the times of Faraday, has now taken on a 

 new beauty. We can picture to ourselves the round world receiving its electrons- 

 or whatever carries or transmits energy through a material ether from the distant 

 sun, and lighting up at night with coruscations about either pole, as this distribu- 

 tion from the cathodic source occurs.* The comparative figures are given in the 

 annexed table. The Antarctic Auroras are those observed by Mr. Henry N. 

 Arctowski, in the " Belgica." 



* The auroral beams seem to emanate from the edge of an irregular elliptical region, which includes both the- 

 strong Canadian magnetic pole and the weaker one in Siberia. Thus, by going north, one gets into parts- 



