46 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



February 



considered as the syllables of clauses. 

 Clauses must be carefully individualiz- 

 ed, for tbey are the syllables of sentences. 

 Divide yoar sentences into their logical 

 units or clauses, and indicate within 

 the clauses all their phonetic units or 

 syllables, and you -will fulfill the grand 

 fundamental precepts of delivery." — 

 Philadelphia Record. 



A STUDY OF THE SUN. 



A FASCINATING RECREATION WHICH 

 ANY ONE MAY ENJOY. 



How It May Be Observed Without Danser. 

 A Method of Getting a Perfectly Pure 

 Beam For Inspection — A Lesson In As- 

 tronomy Cionched In Simple Terms. 



Every day a royal presence, attended by 

 numerous unseen courtiers, sweeps across 

 the sky. Q'ho sun looks us so boldly in the 

 face that we are compelled to veil ourselves 

 from his accursing gaze. Let us commence 

 our new stiulies by contemplating his at 

 tractivene.ss 



A piece ol' well smoked glass will give 

 US good service. If this bo covered with 

 another piece, with strips of paper at the 

 edges to separate them and prevent rub- 

 bing, and other mucilaged strips to bind 

 the outer edges, we shall have a respecta- 

 ble and lasting astronomical instrument. 



The eye niny now examine the dazzling 

 orb without danger, and it will discover 

 a disk which is apparently no larger than 

 that of the full moon, but the fact that 

 the sun is about 400 times farther away 

 accounts for the resemblance in size. But 

 the disk is not all of the immense world, 

 for a very important envelope of vast di- 

 mensions is invisible except to special in- 

 struments. The limb of the sun is seen to 

 be not quite so bright as the central por- 

 tions, because the light from it has to 

 penetrate a greater depth of atmosphere. 



Occasionally we see a "spot" upon the 

 solar surface, in which case it must be 

 very large, but if we are fortunate enough 

 to have access to even a small spyglass we 

 shall many times see spots. There are 

 years when the spots are very numerous 

 (the writer counted 168 one day and more 

 than 800 on a day in 1893), and years 

 when none is seen for months, and this 

 appears to be governed by a "period" of 

 about 11 years. 



If we use a telescope with our smoked 

 glass, the spectacle will be curiously in- 

 teresting, for the object.filass — averylarae 



eye — gacuers many rays of light and bends 

 them to a focus, producing a magnified 

 image which is yet more enlarged by the 

 eyepiece, which is a microscope. Now, 

 the very grain of the sun, so to speak, is 

 visible, the surtace being completely flecked 

 with gray white matter, while here and 

 therehuge masses of white protrude. These 

 latter are Ci.ilcd faculae and are usually 

 associated v.ith the spots which are de- 

 pressions in tJiu surface— deep, dark cavi- 

 ties, but- dark only as contrasted with the 

 shining reyiuns, for they are brighter than 

 the calcium light. Very recently the writ- 

 er measured a large gi'oup and found that 

 it occupied an area of more than 100,000 

 miles in length and about three-fourths as 

 wide, into which could be cast 100 earths 

 without crowding them. Still larger 

 groups have sometimes been noticed. 

 Watching tlie spots from day to day re- 

 veals the tin}G of revolution of the sun 

 upon its axis, about 25 days, which means 

 that one day on the sun is as long as 26 

 of ours. 



As yet th'3 sun has not yielded the secret 

 of its comiJdHitiun, and the telescope, un- 

 aided, is inac, equate to solve the mystery. 

 Perhaps in cliildhood we beguiled hours 

 of church SL-rvice, which were a trifle 

 wearisome to little ones, by noticing the 

 play of color in the "lusters" which hung 

 in profusion from the old fashioned lamps. 

 How little we dreamed that the sun was 

 whispering through this simple medium 

 Intelligible messages of very high impor- 

 tance, for this three faced form of glass is 

 called a prism, the change of direction of 

 objects viewed through it being due to the 

 bending (refraction) of the rays of light 

 passing through it, and the color fringe 

 along the edges of the images the primary 

 rays of which white light is composed, 

 which is easily proved by passing the col- 

 ored rays through another prism, when 

 they form a beam of white light once 

 more. 



The same color band, or spectrum, is 

 shown by a grating of parallel wires 

 strung in a frame, or by a close grained 

 feather, or even by the eyelashes when the 

 eye is half closed. 



But we can easily improve upon these 

 primitive instruments by employing a 

 series of prisms of fine construction or a 

 grating produced by ruling lines with a 

 diamond uijun a piece of perfectly flat and 

 highly poli.shed speculum metal. 



To get a perfectly pure beam for inspec- 

 tion we let the telescopic image of the sun 

 fall upon a delicate slit in a metal plate, 

 which is in the focus of the object glass of 

 a little telescope, whose duty it is to make 

 parallel the rays to be examined, and 

 which sends them through the series of 

 prisms referred tq^py ca^uses them to fall 



