326 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Oct. 



body become visible through the luminous photosphere, have been 

 connected, if not distinctly as a cause, certainly as a coincident phe- 

 nomenon, with particular magnetic disturbances on the surface of 

 the earth ; the solar spots and the magnetic deflections concurring 

 in periods of maxima and minima of ten or eleven years duration. 

 Thus even these aberrant phenomena become part of that amazing 

 system of periodical variation which Sabine and his fellow-laborers, 

 British, French, German, Russian, and American, have established 

 by contemporaneous observation over a large part of the globe (n). 



With every change in the aspect and position of the sun, with 

 every alteration in the place and attitude of the moon, with every 

 passing hour the magnetism of the earth submits to regular and 

 calculable deviation. Through the substance of the ground, and 

 across the world of waters, Nature, ever the beneficent guide to 

 science, has conveyed her messages and executed her purposes, by 

 the electric current, before the discovery of Oersted and the magi- 

 cal inventions of Wheatstone revealed the secret of her work. 



Even radiant light in the language of the new philosophy is 

 conceived of by Maxwell (o), as a form of electro-magnetic motion. 

 And thus the imponderable, all-pervading powers, by which mole- 

 cular energy is excited and exchanged, are gathered into the one 

 idea of restless activity among the particles of matter : — 



— seterno percita motu : 

 ever-moving and being moved, elements of a system of perpetual 

 change in every part, and constant preservation of the whole. 



"What message comes to us with the light which springs from 

 the distant stars, and shoots through the depths of space to fall 

 upon the earth after tens, or hundreds, or thousands of years? It 



(n) Among the interesting researches which have been undertaken 

 on the subject of the spots, may be mentioned those of Wolfe (Compte 

 rendus, 1859), who finds the number and periodicity of the spots to be 

 dependent on the position of Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. 

 Stewart has made a special study of the relation of the spots to the path 

 of Venus (Proc. of the Roy. Soc. 1864) ; and Chacornac is now engaged 

 in unfolding his conception of the spots as the visible effect of volcanic 

 excitement. The peculir features of the solar surface are under exami- 

 nation by these and other good observers, such as Dawes, Nasmyth, 

 Secchi, Stone, Fletcher, and Lockyer. 



(o) Proc. of Roy. Soc. 1864. The elder Herschel appears to have 

 regarded the light of the sun and of the fixed stars as perhaps the effect 

 of an electro-magnetic process — a perpetual auora. 



