143 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



Mr. Proctor, basing his calculations upon the observations of 

 Respighi, Zollner, and Professor Young, has concluded that it 

 is even possible that meteoric matter may be ejected far be- 

 yond the limits of our solar system into the domain of the 

 gravitation of other stars, and that other stars may in like man- 

 nr bombard the sun. 



This appears rather startling ; but, as I have already said, 

 the imagination of the poet and the novelist is beggared by the 

 facts revealed by the microscope, so I may now repeat the 

 assertion, and state it still more strongly, in reference to the 

 revelations of the telescope and the spectroscope. 



As a sample of these, I take the observations of Professor 

 Young, made on September 7th last, and described fully in 

 Nature on October 19th. 



lie first observed a number of the usual flame-prominences 

 having the typical form which has been compared to a ** ban- 

 yan grove." One of these banyans was greater than the rest. 

 This monarch of the solar flame-forest measured f fly -four 

 thousand miles in height, and its outspreading measured in one 

 direction about 07ie hundred thousand miles. It was a large 

 eruption-flame, but others much larger have been observed, and 

 Professor Young would probably have merely noted it among 

 the rest, had not something further occurred. He was called 

 away for twenty-five minutes, and when he returned * the 

 whole thing had been literally blown to shreds by some incon- 

 ceivable uprush from beneath." The space around "was filled 

 with flying debris a mass of detached vertical fusiform fila- 

 ments, each from 10" to 30" long by 2" or 3" wide, brighter 

 and closer together where the pillars had formerly stood, and 

 rapidly ascending." Professor Young goes on to say, that 

 " When I first looked, some of them had already reached a 

 height of 100,000 miles, and while I watched they rose, with 

 a motion almost perceptible to the eye, until in ten minutes the 

 uppermost were 200,000 miles above the solar surface. This 

 was ascertained by careful measurement." 



Here, then, we have an observed velocity of 10,000 miles 

 per minute, and this is the gaseous matter, merely the flash of 

 the gun by which the particles of solidified solar matter are 

 supposed to be projected. 



The reader must pause and reflect, in order to form an ade- 

 quate conception of the magnitudes here treated 100,000 

 miles long and 54,000 miles high ! What does this mean ? 

 Twelve and a half of our worlds placed side by side to measure 



