No. II, 



AURORA BORE ALIS. 



GENERAL REMARKS. 



SO few observations of the Aurora Borealis in high northern latitudes have 

 been recorded, that I trust a minute account of the various appearances it ex- 

 hibits, will not be thought superfluous or uninteresting. The remarks of the 

 late Lieutenant Hood are copied verbatim from his journal. They speak suf- 

 ciently for themselves, to render any eulogium of mine unnecessary. To this 

 excellent and lamented young officer, the merit is due of having been, I be- 

 lieve, the first who ascertained by his observations at Basquiau-Hill, (combined 

 with those of Dr. Richardson at Cumberland- House,) that the altitude of the 

 Aurora upon these occasions was far inferior to that which had been assigned to 

 it by any former observer. He also, by a skilful adaptation of a vernier to the 

 graduated circle of a Eater's Compass, enabled himself to read off small devia- 

 tions of the needle, and was the first who satisfactorily proved, by his observa- 

 tions at Cumberland-House, the important fact of the action of the Aurora upon 

 the compass-needle. By his ingenious Electrometer invented at Fort Enter- 

 prise, he seems also to have proved the Aurora to be an electrical phenomenon, 

 or at least that it induces a certain unusual state of electricity in the at- 

 mosphere. 



The observations of Dr. Richardson, independent of their merit in other 

 respects, point peculiarly to the Aurora being formed at no great eleva- 

 tion, and that it is dependent upon certain other atmospheric phenomena, such 

 as the formation of one or other of the various modifications of cirro-stratus. 



With respect to my own observations, they were principally directed to the 

 effects of the Aurora upon the magnetic needle, and the connexion of the 

 amount, &c, of this effect, with the position and appearance of the Aurora. 



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