This seems almost too wonderful for belief, and yet the proof is incontestable. However, the fact being established that the currents from the aurora borealis do have a direct effect upon the telegraph-wires, and that the currents are of both kinds, positive and negative,--as I have shown in my remarks upon the aurora of 1852, which sometimes left a dark line upon the prepared paper, and at other times bleached it,--it is a natural consequence that the wires should work better without batteries than with them, whenever a current from the aurora has sufficient intensity to neutralize the current from the batteries.
I will try to make myself clear upon this point. It makes no difference, in working the Morse, or any other system of _magnetic_ telegraph, whether we have the positive or the negative pole to the line; but, whichever way we point, the same direction must be continued with all additional batteries we put upon the line. Now if we put a battery upon the line at Boston, of, say, twenty-five cells, and point the positive pole eastward, and the same number of cells at Portland, pointing the positive pole westward, the current will be null, that is to say, each will neutralize the other. Now the aurora, in presenting its positive pole, we will say, increases the current upon the line beyond the power of the magnet-keeper-spring to control it, and thus prevents the line from working, by surfeiting it with the electric current; until, presently, the wave recedes and is followed by a negative current which neutralizes the battery current, and prevents the line from working for want of power. It is plain, therefore, that, if the batteries be taken off, the positive current of the aurora cannot increase nor the negative decrease the working state of the line to the same extent as when the batteries are connected; but that, whichever pole is presented, the magnetism can be made use of by the operator for the ordinary duties of the line.
At Springfield, a gentleman who observed the needle of the compass, during the auroral display of August 28th, noticed that it was deflected first to the west, and then to the east, while the waves of the aurora were in motion. The electrotype plates at the office of the "Republican" at that place were so seriously affected by the aurora, that they could not be printed from during the continuance of the phenomenon.