88 
AURORA BOREALIS SEEN BELOW THE CLOUDS. 
edges, and denser middle part of the stratus. About five minutes after it was first 
seen, this aurora became extinct ; but in the course of three or four minutes was 
suddenly renewed, with a slight shift to the southward, in as great or even greater 
brilliancy. In the mean time, the aurora at the N.W. space exhibited like appear- 
ances, and colours ; red at the lower extremities of the brilliant pencils, and greenish 
yellow upwards. The space here occupied by the pencils, or streamers, was much 
broader, and the lights less condensed into one place, disappearing in some compart- 
ments and extending to others alternately. They played over several belts of the 
stratus clouds, and intervening clear spaces of sky; and were seen, without diminu- 
tion of lustre or change of tinge, on the face of the former. At both sides of this 
space, there were some of the thin irregular lower clouds, behind which some of the 
pencils passed, sometimes at one or other of their extremities, sometimes at their 
middle part. In such cases their continuity instantly disappeared ; for although 
the light of the more brilliant ones shone through these clouds, it was only in a white 
nebulous form, without any parallelism of rays, as seen in the pencils when not so 
obscured. 
About twenty minutes after the aurora was first seen, dense clouds with curled 
edges were rather quickly formed over both the spaces occupied by it, of larger ex- 
tent than they were ; and although the observations were continued till half-past 
twelve o’clock, the meteor was not again seen in the same spaces ; but about a quarter 
to twelve o’clock, a comparatively small space of bright nebulous aurora, without 
defined pencils, was seen very near the horizon at W.N.W. That too disappeared ; 
and in the mean time the clouds in all parts of the sky by degrees dissolved ; the lofty 
stratus ones more slowly than the others. At half-past twelve o’clock, only a few 
remained at the S.E., when the observations were discontinued. 
During the continuance of the aurora, two bright shooting stars descended above 
the space at N.W., in paths parallel to the streamers, that is to the dipping-needle. 
They were of slow motion, and became invisible when passing over the belts of stratus 
clouds, but emerged again after passing them. At a quarter to twelve o’clock, a 
shooting star, as large as Venus at her greatest elongation, shot from near the zenith 
a little to the eastward of the magnetic meridian, and descended in a path parallel to 
that circle, disappearing while passing behind some stratus clouds, but not quite 
while doing so behind some low irregular ones, that lay in its course. Its motion 
was slow, and fitfully interrupted. 
February 2bth . — Clear sky in the morning. Unusually abundant spiculse of hoar- 
frost over all the ground, and whitening the hills to their summits, like a shower of 
snow. Register thermometer through the night at 29°. 
