AMERICAN ALMS FOR BRITISH SCIENCE. 107 



wlio know tliat tlie sun is undergoing during the 

 present year disturbances of the most amazing nature. 

 Solar spots, of various dimensions, have been counted 

 by the hundred of late ; and we now know that when 

 the sun is thus spotted our earth sympathizes with the 

 central orb. Thrilling from pole to pole in magnetic 

 tremor, she spreads out over both hemispheres the 

 auroral banners that indicate the progress of electric 

 revolutions. The devices of her children for utilizing 

 her electric forces are for the time set at naught, and 

 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 inconceivable powers, there are yet in these spaces 

 unless astronomers are at fault uncounted millions 

 of minute bodies, those tiny " pocket-planets " which 

 pass at times through our own atmosphere, and are 

 called by us falling stars, or meteors. Among 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 



