94 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



eclipses, which they had seen at stations distant from each 

 other. 



Barely two years have elapsed since I suggested, in "The 

 Fuel of the Sun," that the great solar prominences and the 

 corona are due to violent explosions of the dissociated ele- 

 ments of water ; that the prominences are the gaseous 

 flashes, and the corona the ejected scoria, or solidified 

 metallic matter belched forth by the furious cannonade 

 continually in progress over the greater portion of the solar 

 surface. 



This explanation at first appeared extravagant, especially 

 as it was carried so far as to suggest that not merely the 

 corona, but the zodiacal light, the zone of meteors which 

 occasionally drop showers of solid matter upon the earth, 

 and even the " pocket-planets" or asteroids so irregularly 

 scattered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, consist of 

 solid matter thus ejected by the great solar eruptions. 

 Even up to the spring of the present year, when Mr. Lock- 

 yer and other leaders of the last year's expeditions reported 

 their imperfect results, and compared them with various 

 theories, this one was not thought worthy of their atten- 

 tion. 



Since that time during the past six or eight months a 

 change has taken place which strikingly illustrates the rapid 

 progress of solar discoveiy. Observations and calculations 

 of the force and velocity of particular solar eruptions have 

 been made, and the results have proved that they are amply 

 sufficient to eject solid missiles even further than I supposed 

 them to be carried. 



Mr. Proctor, basing his calculations upon the observa- 

 tions of Respighi, Zollner, and Professor Young, has con- 

 cluded that it is even possible that meteoric matter may be 

 ejected far beyond the limits of our solar system into the 

 domain of the gravitation of other stars, and that other stars 

 may in like manner bombard the sun. 



This appears rather startling; but, as I have already said, 

 the imagination of the poet and the novelist is beggared by 

 the facts revealed by the microscope, so I may now repeat 

 the assertion, and state it still more strongly, in reference 

 to the revelations of the telescope and the spectroscope. 



