VI NOTES BY THE EDITOR 



body nearer to the sun, by -which the dimensions of the orbit are con- 

 tinually contracted and the velocity in it augmented. The final result 

 will be that, after the lapse of ages, this comet will fall into the sun ; 

 this body, a mere hazy cloud, continually flickering, as it were, like a 

 celestial moth round the great luminary, is at some distant period des- 

 tined to be mercilessly consumed. Now the discovery of this ether is 

 deeply interesting as bearing on other important physical questions, 

 such as the undulatory theory of light; and the probability of the 

 future absorption of comets by the sun is important as connected with 

 a very interesting speculation by Professor Win. Thomson, who has 

 suggested that the heat and light of the sun may be from time to time 

 replenished by the falling in and absorption of countless meteors which 

 circulate round him ; and here we have a cause revealed which may 

 accelerate or produce such an event. 



" On the 1st of September last, at eighteen minutes past 11 A. M., 

 a distinguished astronomer, Mr. Carrington, had directed his telescope 

 to the sun, and was engaged in observing his spots, when suddenly two 

 intensely luminous bodies burst into view on its surface. They moved 

 side by side through a space of about 35,000 miles, first increasing in 

 brightness, then fading away ; in five minutes they had vanished. 

 They did not alter the shape of a group of large black spots which lay 

 directly in their paths. Momentary as this remarkable phenomenon 

 was, it was fortunately witnessed and confirmed, as to one of the bright 

 lights, by another observer, Mr. Hodgson, at Highgate, who, by a happy 

 coincidence, had also his telescope directed to the great luminary at 

 the same instant. It may be, therefore, that these two gentlemen 

 have actually witnessed the process of feeding the sun, by the fall of 

 meteoric matter ; but, however this may be, it is a remarkable circum- 

 stance, that the observations at Kew show that on the very day, and at 

 the very hour and minute of this unexpected and curious phenomenon, 

 a moderate but marked magnetic disturbance took place ; and a storm, 

 or great disturbance of the magnetic elements, occurred four hours 

 after midnight, extending to the southern hemisphere. Thus is exhib- 

 ited a seeming connection between magnetic phenomena and certain 

 actions taking place on the sun's disk, a connection which the obser- 

 vations of Schwabe, compared with the magnetical records of our 

 colonial observatories, had already rendered nearly certain. 



" In chemistry I am informed that great activity has been displayed, 

 especially in the organic department of the science. For several years 

 past processes of substitution (or displacement of one element or organic 

 group by another element or group more or less analogous) have been 

 the main agents employed in investigation, and the results to which 

 they have led have been truly wonderful; enabling the chemist to 

 group together several compounds of comparatively simple constitution 

 into others much more complex, and thus to imitate, up to a certain 

 point, the phenomena which take place within the growing plant or 



