M. Ramm, Inspector of Forests in Norway, wrote
to M. Hansteen, in 1825, that he had heard the noise, which always
coincided with the appearance of the luminous jets, when, being only
ten years old, he was crossing a meadow covered with snow and
hoar-frost, near which no forests were in existence. Dr. Gisler, who
for a long time dwelt in the North of Sweden, remarks that the matter
of the aurorae boreales sometimes descends so low that it touches the
ground; at the summit of high mountains it produces upon the faces of
travellers an effect analogous to that of the wind. Dr. Gisler adds,
that he has frequently heard the noise of the aurora, and that it
resembles that of a strong wind, or the hissing that certain chemical
substances produce in the act of decomposition.
M. Necker, who has described a great number of aurorae which he
observed at the end of 1839 and at the commencement of 1840, in the
Isle of Skye, never himself heard the noise in question; but he remarks
that this noise had been very frequently heard by persons charged with
meteorological observations at the light-house of Swenburgh Head, at
the southern extremity of Shetland.
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