l894-J VEEDER — SOLAR ELECTRICAL ENERGY. 253 



ducting wire and a battery no larger than a thimble. So too, for the 

 conveyance of power to electric motors surprisingly small quantities 

 of conducting material in the form of wire may be used. The facility 

 of conduction is so great for such vast amounts of power and for such 

 long distances that there is no difficulty in supposing that there may 

 be conveyance from sun to earth provided that the proper medium 

 exists in interplanetary space. The writer has examined a large num- 

 ber of meteorites and has found that they all possess magnetic prop- 

 erties such as would result from subjecting them to long continued 

 induction. Thus the impalpable dust and rarefied vapors of inter- 

 planetary space as well as the larger particles and masses of matter, 

 including even the planets themselves, under the conditions of pres- 

 sure and temperature existing in space, may serve as the means of 

 conduction. Meteoric dust and debris is certainly composed of 

 material that is well fitted for purposes of conduction and gives dis- 

 tinct evidence of having been actually so employed, and it is altogether 

 likely that the low temperature of space and the partial vacuum there 

 existing may facilitate the process. 



Conduction like radiation does not involve any transference of 

 material substance. It depends upon the development of stresses in 

 the conducting medium along what are known as lines of force which 

 are not uniformly diffused but extend in particular directions exclu- 

 sively, just as appears in connection with the behavior of magnetic 

 storms which are originated by impulses conveyed from the sun 

 at a particular angle exclusively. In like manner the concentration 

 of inductive effect at certain poles accounts for the localization of 

 the maximum phases of such storms, which has been described, and 

 there is nothing inconsistent in the fact that this localization should 

 be on the side of the earth away from the sun. 



The whole process of the origination of magnetic storms appears 

 to be substantially as follows : Particular portions of the sun's sur- 

 face and cooler immediate surroundings are electrified by what has 

 every mark of being volcanic action. The motion of rotation of the 

 sun carrying forward these charged portions of its surface develops 

 currents dynamically which act inductively along lines of force 

 wherever there is conducting material within their scope. There is 

 no conveyance by radiation or in a manner similar to that in which 

 heat and light are emitted from the sun. The laws governing the 

 process are entirely different from those of radiation and have refer- 

 ence to the principles of conduction as they appear under the condi- 



