402 Observations at Jefferson Co., Miss., on the Aurora of 1859. ° 
July 25th, 1857—took place after a rain storm and above a low 
characteristic cloud during a calm which followed a contest be- 
tween a south and southeast wind. It was less brilliant than 
that of August 28th. 
The Aurora of August 28th took place in a calm after a 
struggle between two opposite winds, and that of to-day took 
place in the calm after a day in which the north wind prevailed 
in the morning and the south in the evening, but the clouds 
were immovable and induced the belief that the south wind was 
low, and that the north wind had ceased. 
The Aurora Borealis of the 28th appears to authorize the infer- 
ence that the light diverged from the magnetic pole, or that it was 
produced by a radiation of the polar magnetism from the terres- 
trial magnet. The most brilliant rays which escaped, emanated 
rapidly from a center below the horizon and that center was 
in the direction of the magnetic pole. A simple plumb line 
showed that the rays which reached Polaris were not perpen- 
dicular beneath that star but were inclined to the east some 
eTees, 
Now the magnetic pole at Springhill is at 6° 28’ east, (mean 
from several observations). The other inclined rays might have 
served to determine the place of this center had time permitte 
my arranging an instrument for taking their sine.* 3 
_The low clouds frequently characteristic of the Aurora Borealis 
did not appear with those of last night. On the 28th there 
was an expanded and regular stratus in the horizon even to the 
height of about 8°, with heat lightning from time to time from 
the northwest. 
7. Observations at Jefferson Co., Miss. (about lat. 31° 50’, lon. 91°), 
by an anonymous correspondent—published September 9th in 
the Port Gibson Reveille. 
The Aurora Borealis of Sept. 1, 1859.—My attention was attrac- 
ted at 11 o’clock last night, (Sept. Ist) to this rare but beautiful 
celestial phenomenon. 
A belt of white light tinged with pink shot up from the north- 
ern horizon to the height of twenty or twenty-five degrees an 
extended east and west nearly the same elevation. Looking to 
those points I noticed the color deepening until about N.E. and 
N.W. it attained a bright deep scarlet red, like deeply tinged 
clouds of our dry-weather sunsets. It shot up in irre col- 
2. 
umns arising in places almost to the zenith and spreading out fan ~ 
shaped and paling as itrose. The white light was stationary eX 
cept apparently sinking lower or rising higher. The colored 
* Tt was equally impossible to prove that the ra: change their direction at the 
q 
