rIERSCHEL SAW NO TOTAL ECLIPSE 165 



Glasgow. So far aa spots are concerned, it work* out 

 to an attractive and popular resemblance to truth 

 SMJ.J- i*nce call it hurricane or tornado 



to take place in the solar atmosphere. Everything is 

 on a gigantic scale, mountain*, winds, waves in this 

 ocean of light A i u below rolls 



back, for a longer or sin luminous solar 



cloud* Into the vaM pit thus l.ti'l open these clouds 

 a flood of light body an- 1 cloudy atmo- 



. >f tli.- nun. The former looks black against the 

 hut reveals mountains upwards of three hundred 

 Billet* in h-i-hi. the latter, with its shelving sides, 

 us more of t i and is less black ; while the 



-Inning matter, rolled back into waves of enormous 

 length and height, is heaped up in Hery storms round 

 the vast gull The dark body of the sun is called the 

 macula, or spot ; the better lighted atmospheric hi 

 the/*num6ra; and the heaped-up waves the faculce, 

 whi.-h -i\ .- the sun's surface the roughness of asp* 

 presents. 1 



This was all that Herschel saw or imagined It was 

 far within tlu truth for awe-inspiring beauty, and for 

 the gigantic movements of these "luminous solar 



;s." Had he seen the " blood-red streak" ot 

 total eclipse of 1706, or the "corona" and "the ruddy 

 clouds" of that of 1715, the science of astronomy 

 would have been perhaps half a cmtury in advance of 

 the position he left it in at his death. Ho did not see 



1 Had Honehel known and reflected on the letter of Sir Isaac Newton 



printed in hu Li/<> ii. 456, he would probably not hare pabliahtd thii 



theory. "The whole body of the ran, therefor*, mut be red-hot " is 



' oonchMfan. Even then it would look black against the rar 



face 



