

xxv.] PROFESSOR NEWTON'S CONCLUSION. 367 



That some meteorites fall upon the sun as upon our earth 

 is undoubted, but with the solar conditions it is impossible that 

 meteorites shall not be formed whenever the upward currents 

 carry the associating metallic vapours to an elevated region 

 where the temperature is low enough to make them condense 

 into a solid form. 



On this point I quote the following from a presidential ad- 

 dress to the American Association recently given by Professor 

 Newton, our highest authority in meteoretic matters. 



" A meteoroid origin has been assigned to the light of the solar 

 corona. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the amount of the 

 meteoroid matter should increase toward the sun, and that the 

 illumination of such matter would be much greater near the solar 

 surface. But it is difficult to explain upon such an hypothesis the 

 radial structure, the rifts, and the shape of the curved lines, that 

 are marked features of the corona. These seem to be inconsistent 

 with any conceivable arrangement of meteoroid s in the vicinity of 

 the sun. If the meteoroids are arranged at random, there should 

 be a uniform shading away of light as we go from the sun. If the 

 meteoroids are in streams along cometary orbits, all lines bounding 

 the light and shade in the coronal light should evidently be pro- 

 jections of conic sections of which the sun's centre is the focus. 

 There are curved lines in abundance in the coronal light, but, as 

 figured by observers and in the photographs, they seem to be en- 

 tirely unlike such projections of conic sections. Only by a violent 

 treatment of the observations can the curves be made to represent 

 such projections. They look as though they were due to forces at the 

 sun's surface rather than at his centre. 1 If those complicated lines 

 have any meteoroid origin (which seems very unlikely), they sug- 

 gest the phenomena of comets' tails rather than meteoroid streams 

 or sporadic meteors. The hypothesis that the long rays of light 

 which sometimes have been seen to extend several degrees from the 

 sun at the time of the solar eclipse are meteor streams seen edge- 

 wise, seems possibly true, but not at all probable." 2 



1 The italics are mine. J. N. L. 



2 Nature, Sept. 30th, 1866, page 532. 



