number and volatility of the beams, the grand intermixture of all the prismatic colors in their utmost splendor, variegating the glowing canopy with the most luxuriant and enchanting scenery, afforded an awful, but at the same time the most pleasing and sublime spectacle in nature. Every one gazed with astonishment, but the uncommon grandeur of the scene only lasted one minute. The variety of colors disappeared, and the beams lost their lateral motion, and were converted into the flashing radiations. The aurora continued for several hours.” A copious deposition of dew—hard gales in the English channel—and a sudden thaw after great cold in northern regions, are circumstances which have been frequently noticed in connection with auroral displays. [Illustration: Aurora Borealis.] The sky of the southern hemisphere occasionally exhibits this strange and mysterious light, contrary to an old opinion upon the subject; and here it must be called Aurora Australis, the southern day-break. Its appearance, however, is far from being so common as in the northern zone, and is much less imposing. Don Antonio Ulloa, off Cape Horn, in the year 1745, witnessed the first appearance of the kind upon record in this region. Upon the clearing off of a thick mist, a light was observed in the southern horizon, extending to an elevation of about thirty degrees, sometimes of a reddish color, and sometimes like the light which precedes the rise of the moon, but occasionally more brilliant. Captain Cook, in the same latitudes, had more distinct views of the luminous streamers adorning the night-sky of the south. In the course of his second voyage he remarks, that on February the 17th, 1773, “a beautiful phenomenon was observed in the heavens. It consisted of long colors of a clear, white light, shooting up from the horizon, to the eastward, almost to the zenith, and spreading gradually over the whole southern part of the sky. These columns sometimes bent sideways at their upper extremity; and though in most respects similar to the northern lights, yet differed from them in being always of a whitish color, whereas ours assume various tints, especially those of a purple and fiery hue. The stars were sometimes hid by, and sometimes faintly to be seen through, the substance of these southern lights, _Aurora Australis_. The sky was generally clear when they appeared, and the air sharp and cold, the thermometer standing at the freezing point, the ship being in latitude 58° south.”