Prof. Hansteen the Aurora Borealis, 87 
was found, too, in the true meridian. From this it appears that 
the centre of the ring of the aurora australis likewise lies at a 
considerable distance, from 30° to 40°, from the sonth pole of 
the earth, and in a meridian which passes through New Holland. 
And here, too, wo have shewn in the first volume of this Jour- 
nal % is the sonth magnetic pole to be found. 
If there be now an actual connection between the polar lights 
and the magnetism of the earth, we should expect to find similar 
luminous rings, or at least powerful exhibitions of the polar light 
in the northern parts of Siberia, and in the neighbourhood of 
Terra del Fuego, that is, at the two extremities of the weaker 
magnetic axis of the earth. And we find that this is in reality 
the case. Omelin gives a splendid, almost a terrific, description i 
of the brilliancy of the aurora borealis, as it is seen in the 
north of Siberia, along the coasts of the Frozen Sea between 
the rivers Jemsei and Lena, adding, that here seems to be 
the true native country of the aurora borealis,” The same 
thing says Horrebow, concerning Iceland ; and the author of 
the Mirror for Kings, together with all later observers down to 
' Ginge, concerning Greenland. We find thus, that, in the north- 
ern hemisphere, the polar lights have two different centres, one 
in the north-west, lying in the neighbourhood of Hudson’s 
Straits ; another in the north-east, lying in the Frozen Sea, north 
from Siberia, When Captain Cook sailed round the south pole, 
lie saw no where the aurora australis, except in the tract we have 
just mentioned, in the Southern Indian Ocean; but the Spanish 
navigator Don Antonio de Ulloa mentions, in a letter to Mairan, 
that, when he sailed past Cape Horn, in Terra del Fuego, as 
often as the thick fog which prevailed there allowed him to see 
but a little beyond the ship’s head, he always observed a per- 
ceptible illumination towards the south or south-west, which had 
altogether the appearance of the polar lights so well known to 
him in the northern hemisphere. The Abbe Molina, too, in his 
description of the Chiloe Isles, which lie a little to the north 
of the south-west coast of America, asserts, that the aurora aus- 
tralis was frequently seen there. It appears.^ therefore^ that the 
polar lights spring from four points on the surface of the earthy 
Christiania Mag. of Nat, Hist, p. 32o 
