DR. SIEMENS'S THEOBY OF THE SUN. 09 



The reader must complete the picture. If he will take a 

 little trouble in doing so he will find that it becomes a portrait 

 of one or the other of the nebula, according to the kind of 

 intergravitating star-cluster from which he starts. I have 

 endeavored to work out some of the details of the nebular con- 

 ditions in Chapter 20. In Chapter 211 have concluded by 

 showing the analogy between a sun and the hydro-electric 

 machine, the sun being the cylinder and the prominences the 

 steam jets. If issuing jets of high pressure steam have Ike 

 same properties at a distance of 93 millions of miles from the 

 earth as upon its surface, the body of the sun and the issuing 

 steam must be in opposite electrical conditions, and furious 

 electrical excitation must result ; and if the laws of electrical 

 induction are constant throughout the universe, the earth must 

 be as necessarily subject to solar electrical influence as to his 

 thermal radiations. Thus the same reasoning which explains 

 the origin and maintenance of the solar heat and light, the sun- 

 spots, the photosphere, the chromosphere, the sierra, the prom- 

 inences, the zodiacal light, the aeorlites and asteroids ; the 

 meteorology of the planets and the rings of Saturn, also shows 

 how the electrical disturbances which produce the aurora 

 borealis and direct the needle may originate. 



Electrical theories of the corona and zodiacal light, and 

 their connection of some kind with the aurora borealis, have 

 been put forth in many shapes, but so far as I have learned 

 none afford any explanation of the origin of the electrical dis- 

 turbance. Without this they are like the vortices of Descartes, 

 which explained the movements of the planets by supposing 

 another kind of motion still more incomprehensible. 



Explanations which are more difficult to explain than the 

 phenomena they propose to elucidate only obscure the light of 

 true science, and stand as impediments to the progress of 

 sound philosophy. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



DR. SIEMENS'S THEORY OF THE SUN. 



A PAPER was read on March 2d, 1882, by Dr. C. "W. 

 Siemens at the Royal Society, and he published -an article on 

 " A New Theory of the Sun" in the April number of th<? 



