ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA AND PROGRESS. 



the .tests most successfully and satisfactorily 

 were recommended as suitable for the service. 

 They are, in the order of their determined 

 merit, the Lee, the Chaffee-Heece, and the 

 Hotchkiss guns, and represent the different 

 systems of the detachable and fixed magazines. 

 Troubles with Indians have occurred during 

 the year only in Arizona and the southwestern 

 part of New Mexico, where the Apaches had 

 made disturbances. The military force in the 

 region had been increased, and no further 

 trouble of moment was apprehended. The 

 Secretary approved the recommendations of 

 the General and the several Department offi- 

 cers, that the limit of the enlisted strength of 

 the Army be fixed at 30,000 instead of 25,000 

 men, as now established, with no increase in 

 the number of officers ; that measures be taken 

 into consideration for the erection of perma- 

 nent and comfortable posts at important stra- 

 tegic points, to take the place of hastily and 

 cheaply built posts, which, having served their 



Surpose as pioneer outworks, might be aban- 

 oned ; that provision be made in the Articles 

 of War for the designation of some officer at 

 each garrison or post to try and punish soldiers 

 for minor offenses, so as to avoid numerous and 

 cumbrous courts-martial ; that regulations be 

 provided for such stated exchanges of stations 

 by regiments, that officers and men at the 

 frontier posts may be assured that they will, 

 in their turn, be transferred to points nearer 

 the more thickly-settled parts of the country ; 

 that the prohibition of the payment of mileage 

 to officers traveling on land-grant railroads be 

 repealed ; that measures be taken immediately 

 for strengthening the sea-coast defenses of the 

 country, and particularly for connecting tor- 

 pedo-lines with the instruments, which must 

 be placed within the fortifications on shore, 

 used for firing them ; that the strength of the 

 Engineer Battalion be raised to 520 men ; and 

 that the Weather Bureau be made a distinct 

 organization, separate from the Army, and 

 maintained by separate appropriations. 



ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA AND 

 PROGRESS. DR. SIEMENS'S NEW THEORY OF 

 THE SUN. An interesting paper on the con- 

 servation of solar energy was read before the 

 Royal Society of London by Dr. 0. William Sie- 

 mens, of England, on the 2d of March, 1882. 

 In the May number of the " Nineteenth Cent- 

 ury" the views of the distinguished author 

 are stated more at length, in an article which 

 has attracted very general attention. After 

 pointing out the facts that the amount of heat 

 poured down annually upon the surface of our 

 earth is a million times greater than that pro- 

 ducible by all the coal raised, which is esti- 

 mated at 280,000,000 tons a year; that the 

 earth intercepts only yai 8 o'oo OATT P art of tn 

 heat radiated by the sun; and that, if coal 

 were consumed in the most perfect manner at 

 the sun's surface, the combustion of the annual 

 produce of all the coal-mines of the earth 

 would supply the solar radiation for no more 



than TsWoooo of a second, Dr. Siemens pro- 

 ceeds : 



Notwithstanding this enormous loss of heat, solar 

 temperature has not diminished sensibly for centuries, 

 if we neglect the periodic changes, apparently con- 

 nected with the appearance of sun-spots, that have 

 been observed by Lockyer and others, and the ques- 

 tion forces itself upon us, how this great loss can be 

 sustained without producing an observable diminu- 

 tion of solar temperature, even within a human life- 

 time. 



Among the ingenious hypotheses intended to ac- 

 count for a continuance of solar heat is that of shrink- 

 age, or gradual reduction, of the sun's volume, sug- 

 gested by Helmholtz. It may, however, be argued 

 against this theory that the heat so produced would 

 be liberated throughout its mass, and would have to 

 be brought to the surface by conduction, aided, per- 

 haps, by convection ; but we know of no material of 

 sufficient conductivity to transmit anything approach- 

 ing the amount of heat lost by radiation. 



Chemical action between the constituent parts of 

 the sun has also been suggested ; but here, again, we 

 are met by the difficulty that the products of such 

 combination would, ere this, have accumulated on 

 the surface, and would have formed a barrier against 

 further action. 



These difficulties led Sir William Thomson to the 

 suggestion that the cause of maintenance of solar tem- 

 perature might be found in the circumstance of me- 

 teorites, not falling upon the sun from great distances 

 in space, as had been suggested by Mayer and Water- 

 ton, but circulating with an acquired velocity within 

 the planetary distances of the sun, and he shows that 

 each pound of matter so imported would represent a 

 large number of heat-units, without disturbing the 

 planetary equilibrium. But, in considering more care- 

 fully the enormous amount of planetary matter that 

 would be required for the maintenance of the solar 

 temperature, Sir William Thomson soon abandoned 

 this hypothesis for that of simple transfer of heat from 

 the interior of a fluid sun to the surface by means of 

 convection-currents, which latter hypothesis is at the 

 present time supported by Professor Stokes and other 

 leading physicists. 



After designating certain facts which seem 

 opposed to the theory of Helmholtz, Dr. Sie- 

 mens proposes a new hypothesis by which, he 

 claims, the objections to the gravitation theory 

 may be avoided, and yet the conservation of 

 solar energy accounted for. The principal 

 points in this hypothesis are : 



1. That stellar space is everywhere filled 

 with something more substantial than the lu- 

 miniferous ether; or that hydrogen, oxygen, 

 nitrogen, carbon, and some of their gaseous 

 compounds, in a highly rarefied condition, are 

 universally diffused. The existence of large 

 quantities of matter in the inter-sidereal spaces 

 is demonstrated, in fact, by the fall of meteors 

 and meteoric stones. 



2. The attraction of the sun is constantly 

 producing an inward flow of this cosmical mat- 

 ter to the solar surface, and, as the central orb 

 of our system rotates with a tangential velocity 

 of 1-25 mile per second, the effect of such mo- 

 tion on the inflowing matter would be similar 

 to the mechanical action of a fan, " drawing it 

 toward himself upon the polar surfaces, and 

 projecting it outward in a continuous disk-like 

 stream from the equatorial surfaces." 



3. During the gradual inflow of hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and hydro-carbons, these substances 



