on sun-spots would become even much more acceptable, if the notion 
of a real surface of the Sun were given up and if the consequences 
of normal and anomalous refraction (better ray-curving) in those 
whirls were allowed for. But to this subject I desire to come back 
on another occasion. 
For the present we will confine our attention to those parts of 
the whirls, optically projecting beyond the edge of the Sun’s disk, 
and we propose the hypothesis, that the whole chromosphere 
with all its prominences is nothing but this system 
of waves and whirls, made visible within shorter or 
longer distances from the Sun’s edge by anomalous 
dispersion of light, coming from deeper layers. 
(Perhaps the structure of the corona, with its polar streamers, 
arches, ete, might tell us something about the course of the surfaces 
of discontinuity at very great distances outside the critical sphere ; 
this point too, however, I will only hint at here). 
So we ascribe the chromosphere to the smaller vortices, to the 
continual rolling up of the surfaces of discontinuity ; in the prominences 
we see the whirling, in which the rarer, very large waves of the 
solar ocean dissipate. 
The particular structure of the chromosphere, suggesting the com- 
parison with a grass-field in vertical section, follows immediately from 
this hypothesis. Prominences likewise nearly always show a tissue of 
stripes, bands and filaments '). These, according to our view, indicate 
the position of the whirl-cores. In the whole region, where whirling 
is going on, the density will, of course, vary in a very irregular way ; 
we therefore may expect to find in the spectrum of that region as 
well the light on the red as that on the violet side of the absorption 
lines, i. e. the chromospheric and flash lines must be double lines ®). 
Along the core of a vortex 
9 the density is a minimum. If, 
now, a vortex intersect the ap- 
= parent limb of the sun obliquely, 
a as in Fig. 2, where pg represents 
| | the core-line, the light coming 
Fig. 2. from a point @ must differ from 
the light, coming from 5. Indeed, following in a the Sun’s radius 
1) J. Fry S. J., Protuberanzen, beobachtet in den Jahren 1888, 1889 und 1890 
am Haynald—Observatorium, p. 5. (Kalocsa, 1902). 
2) W. H. Junius. On the Origin of Double Lines in the Spectrum of the Chromo- 
sphere, Due to Anomalous Dispersion of the Light from the Pho'osphere. Proc. 
Roy. Acad. Amst. Vol. III, p. 193. 
