[footnote] *[Mr. James Glaisher, of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in his interesting 'Remarks on the Weather during the Quarter ending December 31st, 1847', says, "It is a fact well worthy of notice, that from the beginning of this quarter till the 29th of December, the electricity of the atmosphere was almost always in a neutral state, so that no signs of electricity were shown for several days together by any of the electrical instruments." During this period there were 'eight' exhibitions of the Aurora Borealis, of which one was the peculiarly bright display of the Aurora Borealis, of which one was the peculiarly bright display of the meteor on the 24th of October. These frequent exhibitions of brilliant Aurorae seem to depend upon many remarkable meteorological relations, for we find, according to Mr. Glaisher's statement in the paper to which we have already alluded, that the previous fifty years afford no parallel season to the closing one of 1847. The mean temperature of evaporation and of the dew point, the mean elastic force of vapor, the mean reading of the barometer, and the mean daily range of the readings of the thermometers in air, were all greater at Greenwich during that season of 1847 than the average range of many preceding years.] -- Tr. The assertion made by Parry, on the strength of the data yielded by his observations in the neighborhood of the magnetic pole at Melville Island, that the Aurora did not disturb, but rather exercised a calming influence on the magnetic needle, has been satisfactorily refuted by Parry's own more exact researches,* detailed in his journal, and by the admirable observations of Richardson, Hood, and Franklin in Northern Canada, and lastly by Bravais and Lottin in Lapland. [footnote] *Kamtz, 'Lehrbuch der Meteorologie', bd. iii., s. 498 and 501. The process of the Aurora is, as has already been observed, the restoration of a disturbed condition of equilibrium. The effect on the needle is different according to the degree of intensity of the explosion. It was only unappreciable at the gloomy winter station of Bosekop when the phenomenon of light was very faint and aptly compared to the flame which rises in the closed circuit of a voltaic pile between two points of carbon at a considerable distance apart, or, according to Fizeau, to the flame rising between a silver and a carbon point, and attracted or repelled by the magnet. This analogy certainly sets aside the necessity of assuming the existence of metallic vapors in the atmosphere, which some celebrated physicists have regarded as the substratum of the northern light.