THE SUN'S LONG STREAMERS. 667 



from the moon, nor had it any annular structure : it looked like a radi- 

 ated luminous cloud behind the moon." The long streamers manifestly 

 require a different explanation. 



We can not but think that the true explanation of these streamers, 

 whatever it may be (we are not in the least prepared to say what it is), 

 will be found whensoever astronomers have found an explanation of 

 comets' tails. These singular appendages, like the streamers seen by 

 Professor Abbe, extend directly to the sun, as if he exerted some repel- 

 lent action on the matter forming the heads of comets. Indeed, Sir 

 John Herschel did not hesitate to say that the existence of such a 

 repulsive force was, to all intents and purposes, demonstrated by the 

 phenomena of comets' tails. Now we know that meteors and comets 

 are in some waj' associated, though the actual nature of the connection 

 between them is not clear. It is certain that the November meteors, 

 the August meteors, and other such systems, follow in the track of 

 known comets. We know that when, in 1862, the earth passed through 

 the region of space along which Biela's comet had recently traveled, 

 there was a display of thousands of meteors, all radiating from just 

 that part of the heavens from which bodies traveling parallel to the 

 orbit of Biela's comet would have seemed to radiate. It follows from 

 this association between comets and meteors, and from the fact that 

 probably thousands of meteoric and cometic systems travel close to the 

 sun, that in all probability there must exist generally, if not always, in 

 the sun's neighborhood, enormous quantities of the substance whence 

 comets' tails are formed by the sun's repellent action. This being so, 

 we should expect to find generally, if not always, long streams of mat- 

 ter extending from the sun's immediate neighborhood, in the same way 

 that comets' tails extend from comets' heads. Whether the repulsive 

 force is electrical, magnetic, or otherwise, does not at present concern 

 us ; or rather it does concern us, but at present we are quite unable to 

 answer the question. All that we know certainly is that, in the first 

 place, the sun does in some way cause streams of luminous matter to 

 appear beyond the heads of comets, in a direction opposite to his own, 

 and to enormous distances ; and, in the second place, that the matter 

 forming comets' heads is probably present at all times, in large quanti- 

 ties, in the sun's immediate neighborhood. We can hence infer, with 

 extreme probability, that such long streamers as Abbe saw last July, 

 Myer in August, 1869, Feilitzsch in June, 1860, and several Swedish 

 observers during the eclipse of 1733, are produced in the same way as 

 comets' tails, and therefore really extend (as they seem to do) radially 

 from the sun. It is also certain that if they did not really extend ra- 

 diallv from the sun, their alwavs seeming to do so would be altofirether 

 inexplicable. So that the theory to which we are led in one direction 

 leads us also out of what would else be a very perplexing diflBculty in 

 another direction. — Cornhill Magazine. 



