BY THE PRESIDENT. 



53 



occurs to account for -vrliat becomes of the immense force sent out 

 from the sun. Those who have lived in tropical climates, where 

 meat may be roasted on the rock, may form some idea of the power 

 of the sun ; and yet our earth only receives one two-thousand- 

 millionth part of the force of the sun. Then recollect that our 

 sun is only one among many thousands of suns, and by no means 

 a large one. The star Sirius would make 200 or 300 of him. 



As force is indestructible, what becomes of it? Professor 

 Tyndall, I think, says that it passes into space and is lost. I 

 think the Almighty Creator — I speak it with reverence — would not 

 lose all this force ; and that space, unless infinite, could not 

 always hold it. It would become so full of force that it would 

 be dangerous for us to travel through it. It would be as dangerous 

 as for a man to walk through a powder magazine on lucifer 

 matches. Judging from what I consider the plan of nature — 

 namely, perpetual circular motion, I am convinced — and I have 

 thought so these ten years — that the sun's force must circulate. 

 Every particle of force that leaves the sun must sooner or later 

 return to it again. It is not necessary that the force which leaves 

 the sun should return to it in exactly the same form. It may 

 leave the sun as light, or heat, or actinic force, and return to it as 

 electricity, or as magnetism, to be absorbed in the sun's atmo- 

 sphere, or rather, photosphere, and sent out again as gravitation, 

 or light, or heat. There is through the solar system, and perhaps 

 through the universe, a constant circulation of force as perfect and 

 as uniform as the circulation of gross and ponderable matter. 

 The sun is supposed to have a repellent as well as an attractive 

 power. I have not had time to study his action ; but the gaseous 

 envelope of the sun is doubtless of a very complicated nature ; it 

 has doubtless many layers ; it has many elements and metals in it ; 

 and I can conceive it probable that by the meeting of the 

 electricity of the sun — and he is about a million times larger than 

 our earth — and the electricity of space, may be formed a sort of 

 electric light. So that the sun-force having been expelled as light 

 and heat may travel some distance ; on its way some of it may be 

 expended in causing motion in the heavenly bodies, giving them 

 light and heat and life ; and, after a time, the force may return to the 

 sun as electricity or magnetism, to be absorbed and again sent forth. 

 There are several facts which favour this theory — namely, the 

 violent storms in the sun ; the immense velocity of some of the sun 

 spots and clouds — 35,000 miles in five minutes ; the periodicity of 

 the sun spots, there being an increase every eleven years ; a 

 coincidence or relation between storms in the sun and magnetic 



