276 Prof. A Schuster on Recent Total Solar Eclipses. [Feb. 13, 



terrestrial magnetism, our instrumental appliances would yet be quite 

 insufficient to allow us to detect the phenomenon in bodies set into 

 rotation artificially on the surface of the earth, so that there is no 

 a priori reason against the hypothesis. Owing to the large mass of 

 the sun the magnetic forces at his surface would be much stronger 

 than those at the surface of the earth, and we should ex23ect the outline 

 of the corona to show the influence of these magnetic forces if the 

 streamers of the corona are caused by electric discharges. The form 

 of the corona at a time of minimum sunspot is as a matter of fact 

 very similar to what we should expect if the sun was a magnet, 

 discharging negative electricity near its poles. The author has shown, 

 in his Bakerian lecture of 1884, that a magnet introduced into a 

 hollow negative electrode drives the discharges away from the poles 

 of the magnet, concentrating at places where the field is weakest. It 

 is also known that the negative discharge near a magnet tends to take 

 up the shape of the lines of force, and Bigelow has recently drawn 

 attention to the similarity between the polar rays of the corona and 

 the lines of force due to a magnetised s^Dhere. 



All these questions are at present in a purely speculative state, 

 but it is only by keeping an ambitious programme that we may hojDe 

 to make good use of the eclipses which are yet to come. The relation 

 between matter and the luminiferous ether is the great question of 

 the day, and Cosmical Physics is likely to contribute largely to its 

 solution, 



[A. S.] 



