Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/233

Rh certainty whether it were cirro-stratus with aurora or aurora alone."

Many other quotations regarding aurora I have observed could be made, but these three sum up many characteristics not only for Franz Josef Land but for other parts of the Polar Regions—north and south.

It has been said that the aurora is accompanied by a crackling sound, but although carefully attentive for such a sound none of us ever heard it in Franz Josef Land, the opinion at the time being that such crackling sounds might be due to the crackling of ice and snow during an aurora, when there was also intense frost—the sound being caused by the frost, and not by the aurora.

So much for the Aurora Borealis with which every one who has wintered in the far north is so thoroughly familiar. There is a different story to be told in the south, where, during the two cruises and the wintering of the Scotia not a single Aurora Australis was seen. Neither do the Swedish and French expeditions appear to have seen any definite displays of the aurora. Dr. Nordenskjold writes to me, saying, "We never did see any display of aurora at all during the time of our stay in the South, though looking always for such." Dr. Charcot says, "During both my expeditions, 1904 and 1909, we had once in 1904 and once in 1909