Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 391 



to the height of two or three hundred miles, and that they are seen 

 through the solar atmosphere. Be this as it may, they increase in 

 height from their bases, separate into two, three, and sometimes four 

 distinct spots in the same umbra, and again unite with the original 

 mass. We should think it a surprising phenomenon were we to 

 observe a mountain one, two, or three miles in height on the earth's 

 surface, undergo such unprecedented mutations; but as terrestrial 

 matter cannot, from its gravitating tendency, be easily separated 

 without a strong convulsion of nature, we should therefore be inclined 

 to fancy that in the act of such changes it had become transformed 

 from a solid to a liquid state. The general conclusions drawn by the 

 first observers of the solar spots were, that they often appeared in 

 such a state ; nor can any observer now affirm from his notes, if 

 faithfully taken by the aid of a high magnifying power, that their 

 nuclei are solid inseparable masses : it may indeed appear so in 

 many of the smaller spots, but it often has a different appearance in 

 the larger ones. How then is the fact to be reconciled ? Ingenious 

 arguments may be advanced for and against their solidity and situ- 

 ation, yet doubts will remain. In the present stage of philosophy 

 it is beyond the power of human knowledge to decide. 



If heat exists in the sun's atmosphere, the faculas, or lucid spots, 

 which we have seen precede, accompany, and follow the macula?, 

 may be reasonably conceived to be the attenuated parts of that at- 

 mosphere, which may be caused by an extraordinary temperature, 

 just as the earth's atmosphere is rarified by solar influence, or the 

 extrication of heat, and strong terrestrial radiations. 



The apparent motion of the solar spots from the sun's centre to 

 his western limb, describes a diametrical line from a scale of chords 

 of 30 degrees in two days and a half; but they take four days to 

 advance the same distance from the end of that line to the extreme 

 edge of his western limb ; and the distance of their apparent mo- 

 tion in one day at or near the centre, is about equal to the same 

 distance they move the last two days and three quarters of their ap- 

 pearance on the western side of the disk. By this unequal motion 

 of the solar spots it may be easily proved by the uniform motion of 

 an artificial globe on its axis, that, in addition to the sun's plane 

 circular area as seen through a smoked or shaded glass, he is globu- 

 lar, but not a perfect globe ; as from the effects of universal gravi- 

 tation, or the gravitating of every particle of matter to every other 

 particle, combined with rotatory motion, the celestial bodies of the 

 solar system assume the form of oblate spheroids. The solar spots 

 have also an apparent circular diurnal motion round the sun's disk, 

 arising from the diurnal motion of the earth on its axis. They 

 appear generally to pass near the centre of, or within the sun's 

 tropics; but a few have been seen here with a declination of more 

 than 50 degrees, both north and south. On the 26th ultimo, the 

 blackest and most circular spot in the nucleus, and the brightest 

 in the surrounding umbra we ever observed, was by measurement 

 precisely in the centre of the sun's disk at six o'clock in the evening; 

 but it disappeared before it reached the western limb. 



The 



