5:2 



Notices respecting New Books. 



but I informed him afterwards of what had taken place. Two 

 very fine displays of the meteor occurred shortly after, at the 

 end of September and near the middle of October ; and regular 

 observations were obtained over a great extent of country, of which 

 the calculations by myself are published in the Cambridge Trans- 

 actions for 1846. 



In the spring and summer of 1834, having to recover in haste 

 my classical studies in preparation for. commencing residence as 

 an undergraduate of Queen's College, Cambridge, in October of 

 that same year, I did not attend the Meeting of the British 

 Association at Edinburgh (nor since, except for a day or two 

 at Cambridge in 1845), but on calling upon my old friend and 

 former private tutor in chemistry, Dr. Dalton, to bid him good- 

 bye on my going up to Cambridge, we had a conversation very 

 interesting to both upon the Aurora-Borealis committee which 

 had been appointed in 1833. He informed me that he had 

 made inquiries respecting meetings of the committee which 

 ought to have been held at Edinburgh, but could learn nothing 

 on the subject, and only heard from Sir D. Brewster, "Oh, you 

 have it all your own way/' meaning that the advocates of the 

 atmospheric locality of the meteor had retired from the discussion. 



Was this a conclusion of the discussion of the subject worthy 

 of a national association for the advancement of science ? Was 

 this a scientific morality that could be defended ? namely, the 

 suppression of a committee before it had made its report, because 

 those who had assumed the management of the Association had 

 advocated an untenable hypothesis, and to this day leave the 

 scientific world floundering in discussions of atmospheric aurora 

 boreales which, it has been demonstrated, can have no existence. 



The hypothesis which I have published elsewhere, that the 

 aurora boreales are caused by the earth's electro-magnetism 

 acting upon masses of very rare vapours, of like constituents to 

 the meteoric stones and vaporous comets moving in the planet- 

 ary spaces under the laws of gravitation, and coming near the 

 boundaries of our atmosphere, is, I believe, the only tenable one. 



X. Notices respecting New Books. 



Researches on the Solar Spectrum, and the Spectra of the Chemical 

 Elements. By G. Kirchhoff, Professor of Physics in the Univer- 

 sity of Heidelberg. Translated, with the Author's sanction, from 

 the Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1861, by Henry E. 

 Roscoe, B.A.y Professor of Chemistry in Owens College, Man- 

 chester. Macmillan and Co. 1862. 



ALL who are interested in the study of the spectrum will be glad 

 to learn that this important memoir by Professor Kirchhoff 



