AURORAL PHENOMENA ON THE EVENING OF SEPT. 12, 1881. 15 



clearly to be seen in the northern sky, sometimes shooting up streamers of light 

 nearly to the zenith, and varying continually in form and brightness ; this display, 

 however, was no more brilliant or interesting than many similar ones seen on 

 other nights, and deserves mention only to be distinguished from the following. 

 But in the southeast sky, about 30 or 35 degrees above the horizon, there appeared 

 two horizontal streaks of light — about five 5 degrees apart and 15 or 20 degrees in 

 length — which at the time I took to be two clouds highly charged with electricity. 

 The accompanying sketch (Fig. i) will be of service in describing the appearance, 

 but must not be taken as accurate in any detail, being made after some months 

 and from memory; moreover, the entire phenomenon was continually changing. 

 Both streaks were luminous, with a pale hazy light very similar to moonlight. 

 From the upper of the two were suspended by small cords of light a number of 

 balls, brighter than either of the streaks, which were continually jumping up and 

 down in vertical lines, much after the manner of pith-balls when charged with 

 electricity. Above the upper streak there was a bright space, whose sides were 

 convergent at about the angle shown in the sketch, which seemed to be compos- 

 ed of streamers of light, gauzy in appearance and decreasing in brightness from 

 the streak outwards. From the lower streak a similar mass of light extended. 

 The only difference noticed in the two streams of light was that the inclination 

 of the lower was greater than that of the upper. 



(Fig. No. i.) 



I appeared on the scene about fifteen or twenty minutes after the beginning 

 when the brilliancy of the display was approaching a maximum. Soon after it 

 began to fade, the balls and cords first gradually disappearing, then the streamers 

 of light on both sides, and finally the two horizontal streaks — the whole being 

 lost to sight in the darkness in the course of about fifteen minutes. 



