It has been recently stated, in an article on the Telephone in ‘Nature,’ that Professor Peirce “has observed the most curious sounds produced from a telephone in connexion with a telegraph wire during the Aurora Borealis;” but no further details are given. In experimenting with a silicic fluoride vacuum-tube between the poles of an electro-magnet, I found, on the magnet being excited, that the capillary stream of blue light was decreased in volume and brightness, and at the same time from within the tube a peculiar whistling or slightly metallic ringing sound was heard. [Sidenote: Adverse conclusion as to noises accompanying Aurora.] I certainly have never met with an instance of noise accompanying an Aurora and traced to it. On the whole the balance of evidence seems quite adverse to any proof of noises proper ordinarily accompanying an Aurora. _Colours of the Aurora._ [Sidenote: Colours of the Aurora. Sir John Franklin’s views. Other observers have described all colours of spectrum. Violet rare. Crimson indicates coming Aurora.] Sir John Franklin considered the colours in the Polar Aurora did not depend on the presence of any luminary, but were generated by the motion of the beams, and then only when that motion was rapid and the light brilliant. The lower extremities, he says, quivered with a fiery red colour, and the upper with orange. He also saw violet in the former. Other observers have, in their various descriptions of Auroræ, mentioned the colours of the rays or beams as red, crimson, green, yellow, &c.; in fact, comprising the range of the spectrum. Violet seems less frequently mentioned. The red or crimson colour is frequently the first indication of the coming Aurora, and is usually seen on or near the horizon. The colours have frequently been observed to shift or change. [Sidenote: Prof. Piazzi Smyth describes colours of Aurora of Feb. 4, 1872, as seen at Edinburgh.] Prof. Piazzi Smyth, in a letter to ‘Nature,’ describing the Aurora of February 4th, 1872, as seen at Edinburgh, says that when the maximum development was reached all the heavens were more or less covered with pink ascending streamers, except towards the N., which was dark and grey—first by means of a long low arch of blackness, transparent to large stars, and then by the streamers which shot up from this arch, which were green and grey only for several degrees of their height, and only became pink as they neared the zenith. The red streamers varied from orange to rose-pink, red rose, and damask rose. The Professor pointed out that the spectroscope knew no variety of reds giving one red line only, and attributed this to the mixing up of rays and streamers of blackness out of the long low arch. When the Aurora faded away a true starlight-night sky appeared; so that evidently the dark arch and streamers were as much part of the Aurora as the green and red lights. [Sidenote: Dr. Allnatt at Frant describes vivid colours of same Aurora.]