THE SUN. 8l 



the 2d of September the greatest Aurora ever seen there 

 made its appearance. These Auroras were accompanied 

 with unusually great electro-magnetic disturbances in 

 every part of the world. In many places the telegraphic 

 wires struck work. They had too many private messages 

 of their own to convey. At Washington and Philadel- 

 phia, in America, the telegraph signal-men received 

 severe electric shocks. At a station in Norway the 

 telegraphic apparatus was set fire to ; and at Boston, in 

 North America, a flame of fire followed the pen of Bain's 

 electric telegraph, which, as my hearers perhaps know, 

 writes down the message upon chemically prepared 

 paper. 



(39.) I must now proceed to tell you what the tele- 

 scope has revealed to us as to the nature and magnitude 

 of these spots. And here again, the closer we look, the 

 more the wonder increases. The spots were at first 

 supposed' to be clouds of black smoke floating over the 

 great fiery furnace beneath, then great lumps of fresh 

 coal laid on ; then comets fallen in to feed the fire j then 

 tops of mountains standing up above a great surging 

 ocean of melted matter. They are none of all these 

 things ; they are not clouds floating above the light, nor 

 protuberances sticking up above the general surface ; 

 they are regions in which, by the action of some most 

 violent cause, the bright, luminous clouds, or what at all 

 events we may provisionally call clouds, which float in 

 the sun's atmosphere, are for a time cleared off; and 

 through the irregular vacuities thus created, allow us to 

 see perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of miles 



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