Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/230

226 The displays of aurora in Franz Josef Land during the winter 1896–97 were particularly brilliant and frequent. The usual display consisted of a series of waving ribbon bands like muslin frills, composed of vertical streamers in continuous motion, the streamers appearing to pass with varying intensity from end to end of these flowing ribbons covering almost every point of the sky; every now and then the streamers would shoot out to an immense length downwards towards the earth and far upwards towards the zenith, forming a corona from which all the rays that filled the whole sky appeared to originate. This coronal appearance is probably perspective effect, due to the enormous length of the shimmering rays. The general display of colour was exactly the same as has been described at Ben Nevis Observatory, but much more intense, and culminating during the most brilliant periods with flashes of emerald green, brilliant crimson, and delicate violet hues, which pass from end to end of the never-ending, ever-intertwining ribbons. It can scarcely be compared with any familiar object unless it be to an imaginary ballet in the sky, where the figures are in extraordinarily rapid motion, passing in continuous procession, one line of dancers mingling with another, and a series of flashlights of different colours passing rapidly across the tinselly muslin