40 NETHER LOCHABER. 



It is worthy of record that the present severe snow-storm was 

 ushered in by a very splendid and in many respects peculiar auroral 

 display. Shortly after dark on Friday evening, a faint auroral 

 film, over which an occasional streamer flashed impetuously, ovei^ 

 spread the northern heavens. All this, however, soon died away, 

 and- the north assumed a cold, clear, frosty aspect. Between seven 

 and eight o'clock many meteors, some of them of great brilliancy 

 and beauty, were observed to cross and recross the zenith and its 

 neighbourhood in all directions. Towards the latter hour, however, 

 these ceased, and all of a sudden, in a very few seconds at most, the 

 whole celestial hemisphere from E.N.E. to W.S.W. — from horizon 

 to horizon — appeared completely spanned by a magnificent auroral 

 arch, eight degrees in breadth ; like a glorious bridge of a single semi- 

 circular span, with its edges or parapets of a deep blood-red colour, 

 and its centre part or roadway of frosted silver ; the rest of the 

 heavens, in all directions, being the while of an inky blue, and cold and 

 cloudless, without the slightest appearance of anything like streamers 

 to be seen anywhere. Some idea of the brilliancy of this auroral 

 arch may be formed from the fact that such bright stars as Arcturus, 

 Castor and Pollux, Aldebaran, Mars, and others, which lay along 

 its path, became quite dim, and when located near the centre and 

 brightest part of the stream, almost invisible. Even Venus, which 

 once or twice was overlapped for a few minutes by the arch's margin 

 only, lost all its lustre and sheen, and had a burdened anxious 

 aspect, as if the forehead and " face divine " of a mighty intelligence 

 laboured under the shade of deep and profound thought. For 

 upwards of an hour did this splendid auroral arch continue to span 

 the heavens from horizon to horizon, and undergoing little or no 

 change, until its final disappearance, by what seemed a process 

 of gradual contraction into itself and towards its terminus in the 

 east-north-east, whence it started. Such was the very singular 

 meteoric phenomena by which a severe snow-storm and an amoimt 



