THE 80LA.R ECLIPSE OF 1871. 141 



use has been made of the good weather. From one station 

 we arc told : " Thin mist ; spectroscope satisfactory ; rever- 

 sion of lines entirely confirmed ; six good photographs." From 

 another : " Weather line ; telescopic and camera photographs 

 successful ; ditto polarization ; good sketches ; many bright 

 lines in spectrum." 



This is very different from the gloomy accounts of the- 

 expedition of last year ; when we consider that the different 

 observers are far apart, and that if all or some of them are 

 similarly favored we shall have in the photographs a series of 

 successive pictures taken at intervals of time sufficiently distant 

 to reveal any progressive changes that may have occurred in 

 the corona while the moon's shadow was passing from one 

 station to the other. I anticipate some curious revelations 

 from these progressive photographs, that may possibly reconcile 

 the wide differences in the descriptions that competent observ- 

 ers have given of the corona of former eclipses, which they had 

 seen at stations distant from each other. 



Barely two years have elapsed since I suggested, in " The 

 Fuel of the Sun," that the great solar prominences and the 

 corona are due to violent explosions of the dissociated elements 

 of water ; that the prominences are the gaseous flashes, and 

 the corona the ejected scoria, or solidified metallic matter 

 belched forth by the furious cannonade continually in progress 

 over the greater portion of the solar surface. 



This explanation at first appeared extravagant, especially as 

 it was carried so far as to suggest that not merely the corona, 

 but the zodiacal light, the zone of meteors which occasionally 

 drop showers of solid matter upon the earth, and even the 

 " pocket planets" or asteroids so irregularly scattered between 

 the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, consist of solid matter thus 

 ejected by the great solar eruptions. Even up to the spring of 

 the present year, when Mr. Lockyer and other leaders of the 

 last year's expeditions reported their imperfect results, and 

 compared them with various theories, this one was not thought 

 worthy of their attention. 



Since that time during the past six or eight months a 

 change has taken place which strikingly illustrates the rapid 

 progress of solar discovery. Observations and calculations of 

 the force and velocity of particular solar eruptions have been 

 made, and the results have proved that they are amply sufficient 

 to eject solid missiles even further than I supposed them to be 

 carried. 



