AMERICAN ALMS FOR BRITISH SCIENCE. 95 



the telegraph clerk finds for a while that Mother 

 Earth is having her own way and will not obey his be- 

 hests. If the sun, ninety millions of miles away from 

 us, thus affects the earth's frame, and thus illuminates 

 terrestrial skies, it need not be greatly wondered at 

 should it be proved that he illuminates with no dis- 

 similar light the regions lying more closely around him. 

 If there are no planets like our earth in these regions, 

 no large bodies on which the sun can exert his incon- 

 ceivable powers, there are yet in these spaces unless 

 astronomers are at fault uncounted millions of minute 

 bodies, those tiny 6 pocket-planets ' which pass at times 

 through our own atmosphere, and are called by us 

 falling stars, or meteors. Amongst these tiny bodies 

 auroral gleams may pass, producing by their united 

 lustre the glories of the solar corona. 



But whether this view be just, or whether, as Mr. 

 Lockyer holds, the corona is only a phenomenon of our 

 own air, or is due (as the fanciful M. Faye once 

 thought of the coloured prominences) to some sort of 

 lunar mirage, certain it is that just now it is a matter 

 of extreme interest that further observations should be 

 made. Undoubtedly, what we have lately learned re- 

 specting the sun gives an interest and importance to 

 this matter of the solar corona which it never before 

 possessed. Yet this is the problem respecting which 

 our Government is understood to have said to astro- 

 nomers, ( As far as we can, we will prevent you from 

 solving it.' 



Truly it would be difficult to show that any material 



