THE SUN. 45 



thing, proving conclusively that once in about 

 ten years magnetic disturbances reached their 

 height of violence ; and Sabine was not slow 

 to notice the correspondence between the mag- 

 netic period and the sun-spot period. In the 

 same year (1852) Wolf and Alfred Gautier 

 (1793-1881) independently made the same dis- 

 covery, which had thus been made by four 

 separate investigators. 



In the same year an English amateur as- 

 tronomer, Richard Christopher Carrington (1826- 

 1875), commenced a series of solar observations 

 which led to some remarkable discoveries. From 

 observations on the spots, Carrington discovered 

 that while the Sun's rotation was performed in 

 25 days at the equator, it was protracted to 

 27|- days midway between the equator and the 

 poles. In 1858 Carrington demonstrated the 

 fact that spots are scarce in the vicinity of the 

 solar equator, but are confined to two zones 

 on either side, becoming scarce again at thirty- 

 five degrees north or south of the equator. 

 Contemporary with Carrington was Friedrich 

 Wilhelm Gustav Sparer (1822-1895), who was 

 born in Berlin in 1822 and died at Giessen, 

 July 7, 1895. He commenced his solar ob- 

 servations about the same time as Carrington, 

 and independently discovered the Sun's equatorial 



