158 Meteoric Astronomy. (April, 
meteors, this portion of the light should exhibit a solar 
spectrum, though of great faintness; or, unless great 
light-gathering power were employed, a faint continuous 
spectrum would be seen. The Zodiacal light, also, should 
exhibit a continuous spectrum if it represents the outer 
portion ofthe sun-surrounding meteor families. Until within 
the last few months the coronal light had been known to 
give a continuous spectrum as well as certain bright lines 
(or one bright line) ; and it had been stated that the zodiacal 
light gives a bright line spectrum. The first evidence was 
questionable; the second seemed opposed to the meteoric 
theory. But Janssen has examined the coronal light with 
the most powerful light-gathering means yet employed, and 
he recognises the solar dark lines in its spectrum. This 
evidence is unquestionable. And Liais, in the clear skies of 
tropical South America, has examined the zodiacal light and 
gets an infinitely faint continuous spectrum, so that what 
seemed a strong objection to the meteoric theory is removed. 
Let us pause, however. Liais has been charged with 
drawing an ideal picture of the corona during total eclipse, 
(his drawing by the way singularly countenancing the 
meteoric theory.) But it was ideal; how, then, shall Liais’s 
evidence be trusted on any other subject ? What, however, 
if it was not ideal at all; but simply characteristic, because 
Liais observed the eclipsed sun under singularly favourable 
conditions at his southern stations in 1858? This is pre- 
cisely the inference fairly deducible from (or rather the con- 
clusion forced upon us by) the evidence of the observers of 
the recent eclipse. Janssen speaks of special forms re- 
sembling those seen by Liais; observer after observer 
speaks of complicated structures within the corona; the 
photographs tell the same tale; and, lastly, the skilful 
artist Harrison, specially employed to ban the meteoric 
theory, has blessed it instead, his drawing as described by 
his friend Mr. Lockyer (so long the advocate of the atmo- 
spheric glare theory) “strongly recalling” the long sus- 
pected representation of the corona by Liais. 
In conclusion, I believe little question can exist that a 
large proportion of these phenomena which have seemed most 
perplexing as well in the solar corona as in the zodiacal 
light, admit of being very readily explained when studied 
in the light of these theories of Schiaparelli’s, which, after 
the usual term of doubt, have so recently received the san¢tion 
of the highest astronomical tribunal in Great Britain. 
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