PRESENT SCIENCE IS CHAOTIC 139 



statement, the sun revolves at its equator 4,000 

 miles an hour, or over a mile a second, while it re- 

 volves very slowly near its poles and virtually is not 

 in motion at all at its poles. 



This rapid motion at the equator and slowness of 

 motion near the centre of the sun is calculated to 

 deceive the eye and make it think it completes its 

 rotation at its equator in less time than at a dis- 

 tance from it, looking down along the slope of the 

 sun's vast circumference. This is no evidence, for 

 we see only the moving clouds of light on the outer 

 rim of the sun's atmosphere, ten to twenty thou- 

 sand miles or more from its surface, and they seem 

 to and do complete their rotation a short time 

 sooner. This they naturally should do. How frail 

 and uncertain is the argument based on such 

 doubtful and assumed facts? 



Thus these wise astronomers claim from this 

 slim, unreliable evidence and the assumed excessive 

 heat of the sun, that the sun is not a solid body 

 at its surface. Yet the same author rejects this 

 same evidence that Jupiter is not a solid body in 

 the following language : "The difference in the time 

 of Jupiter's rotation at the equator and in middle 

 latitudes is, so far as we yet know, about five min- 

 utes. That is to say, the equatorial regions rotate 

 in nine hours and fifty minutes and those in mid- 

 dle latitudes in nine hours and fifty-five minutes, 

 a difference amounting to 200 miles an hour, a 

 seemingly impossible difference were the surface 

 liquid. We cannot assume this to be the case with- 

 out more observations than are yet recorded, as 

 no well defined law of rotation in different latitudes 

 has yet been made out." Thus this learned astron- 



