384 Transactions. — Astronomy. 



Professor Balfour Stewart, in one of the Manchester Science 

 Lectures, says that the prominences sometimes assume the 

 appearance of a cloud, instead of a fire or a fiery tree. If so, there 

 need be no further difficulty. Our two little dusky patches have 

 a place among recognized phenomena." 



The Bishop of Nelson says : — " The intensification of bright- 

 ness at certain points in the above mentioned ring of light (see 

 General Description above), the chromosphere or ring, amounted 

 to luminous protuberances, which to my eye, and I can only 

 answer for that, had the appearance of molten mountains of 

 liquid silver, increasing with every beating second in intensity 

 of whiteness, combined with the idea also of light or luminous- 

 ness. Light seemed to flow out of them in liquid streams. It 

 was condensed, not dispersed light ; to speak in popular language, 

 it seemed as if it were light coming out in liquid streams : lava 

 streams of silver, ever and anon coming out of the three craters 

 of light. I saw no red flames, though, honestly, I tried to see 

 them ; I had one momentary glance of redness, but that was at 

 an earlier stage. ... It seemed to me as if I witnessed once 

 more what 1 witnessed in the north of England, at Bolton, in 

 Lancashire, in the pouring out of the cauldron of molten steel 

 in the Bessemer process, in which I believe oxygen plays so 

 important and striking a part." 



Mr. A. S. Atkinson states as follows : — " The only ' red 

 prominences ' I saw were a row of six or seven small ones, extend- 

 ing from about the vertical point towards the east, looking to 

 the naked eye of about the same size and shape, and at about 

 the same distance apart. Larger ones were seen by others, and, 

 I believe, appear in three places in the photographs. The tallest 

 of these red prominences, measured very roughly on the photo- 

 graph, seems to be about T ^th the diameter of the sun : if really 

 so, it would represent a height of some 70,000 miles, while the 

 long white cone I have mentioned (see Corona) was probably not 

 less than 500,000 miles. Mr. J. B. Akersten obtained for me 

 two small photographs during totality : one immediately after it 

 began, with an exposure of something less than a second, the 

 other a few seconds later with about double the exposure. A 

 third plate was in the camera, and all but ready, when the sun 

 reappeared ; it was taken just after the reappearance, but two 

 of the red prominences are still shown. It will also be noticed 

 that in this photograph there is a rather well-marked ray, tan- 

 gential to the reappearing sun, though not to the central point 

 of the bright limb ; or, say, not parallel to the line joining the 

 two cusps ; indeed, the latter line, if produced to the westward, 

 would almost meet the ray as it is, without the latter being 

 produced at all. There are also two short divergent rays of 

 ordinary sunlight. There are also two short divergent rays from 

 the eastern cusp, and a shorter and fainter one from the western 



