1887.] on the Sun's Heat, 21 



how its melted matter has been scoured off from the front part of its 

 surface in its final rush through the earth's atmosphere when it was 

 seen to fall on March 14, 1881, at 3.35 p.m. 



For the theory of the sun it is indifferent which of these varieties 

 of configurations of matter may have been the immediate antecedent 

 of his incandescence, but I can never think of these material ante- 

 cedents without remembering a question put to me thirty years ago 

 by the late Bishop Ewing, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles : " Do you 

 imagine that piece of matter to have been as it is from the beginning ; 

 to have been created as it is, or to have been as it is through all time 

 till it fell on the earth ? " I had told him that I believed the sun to be 

 built up of meteoric stones, but he would not be satisfied till he knew 

 or could imagine, what kind of stones. I could not but agree with 

 him in feeling it impossible to imagine that any one of such meteo- 

 rites as those now before you has been as it is through all time, or 

 that the materials of the sun were like this for all time before they 

 came together and became hot. Surely this stone has an eventful 

 history, but I shall not tax your patience by trying just now to trace 

 it conjecturally. I shall only say that we cannot but agree with the 

 common opinion which regards meteorites as fragments broken from 

 larger masses, and we cannot be satisfied without trying to imagine 

 what were the antecedents of those masses. 



[W. T.] 



