THE ECLIPSE OF 1878. 13! 



suspected, the zodiacal light is sunlight reflected from 

 cosmical matter travelling continually around the sun 

 (for we could not expect the solar dark lines to appear 

 in so faint a spectrum). If this is the case, the radiated 

 corona cannot but be regarded as only the innermost 

 part the core, so to speak of the zodiacal region. 

 'Hence, we should be led to recognise the existence of 

 envelope after envelope around the sun, until even the 

 vast distance at which our earth travels is reached or 

 overpast. We need wonder little that under these 

 circumstances our earth should sympathise with the 

 disturbances affecting, from time to time, the great 

 central luminary of our system, or that she should be 

 thrilled from pole to pole by magnetic tremors, when 

 his orb is excited either by internal throes or by 

 external impulses to intense electrical action. 



Good Words; January, 1872. 



THE ECLIPSE OF 1878. 



FIRST, let us consider the news respecting the sun's 

 complex atmosphere, extending some 300 or 400 miles 

 from his surface, and containing all or most of those 

 vapours, metallic and otherwise, whose absorptive action 

 produces the dark lines in the solar spectrum. All 

 these lines were seen, as on former occasions, reversed 

 when totality began and ended. But on this occasion, 

 for the first time, the observers were able to distinguish 



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