535 
NEAL ACIEE: 
March 24, 1870 
i) 
The most notable phenomenon visible during the 
Indian eclipse was the Great Horn visible in Fig. 3, the 
structure of which was extremely curious. Below | it in the 
drawing we have a part of the chromosphere, including a 
“ flaring,” which has been since called a “radiance” by 
the American astronomers. Fig. 4 was the last photo- 
graph taken, and here it is seen that the Great Horn is 
nearly eclipsed, and that the chromosphere on the opposite 
si ae of the sun is now exposed, including a strange animal- 
like form, which much struck the observers. An exami- 
nation into the structure of the Great Horn is not the least 
interesting part of the report. 
Major Tennant thus sums up his results :— 
First.— The corona is the atmosphere of the sun not self-luminous, 
but shining by reflected light. It is evidenced both by the spectro- 
scope and polariscope that this is the case, but there is one reser- 
vation to be made. ‘The polariscope has shown clearly that the 
light of the brightest part of the corona is mainly reflected ; but, 
looking to the flare which is seen in photographs No. 2 and 3, it 
seems impossible to doubt that in those places there must have 
been some inherent luminosity in the corona ; unless indeed we 
consider the flare as a modified form of protuberance. It is, I 
think, now certain that luminous gas issues from what is more 
strictly the sun, and I apprehend this flare to be some of this. 
Secondly.— The Great Horn certainly was composed of incan- 
descent vapours, and probably all the brilliant protuberances are 
the same. In the Great Horn these vapours were hydrogen, 
sodium, and magnesium. It seems to me perfectly certain that 
the ignited hydrogen issued from the sun itself, and that it carried 
up with it the light vapours of sodium and magnesium far above 
the level at which they would naturally lie ; hydrogen naturally 
would be the very highest of the gaseous vapours, and conse- 
quently the coolest ; if, however, it were set free at the surface of 
the sun it would be intensely hot, and seek, with great violence, 
to ascend, in which process, if there be a stratum of heated 
vapours, such as is usually believed to exist round the sun, the 
hydrogen would partly displace and carry up these vapours, and 
the lighter would be taken in preference. In fact, in this case it 
has carried the two lightest, and that of iron, which is so much 
heavier (I think we may presume this from the absence of the 
line corresponding to E), was either displaced or dropped sooner 
than the height at which I observed. Photograph No. 1 shows 
that there were two jets of vapour concerned in forming this Horn. 
One, the largest and most northerly, is seen nearly perpendicu- 
larly to the limb, and seems also to have been the most luminous ; 
the other issues about 20,000* miles towards the south, and at 
anangle. They met at a height of some 16,000* miles, and the 
result was the rapid vorticose motion, which is evidenced in all 
the photographs as having existed in the upper portion. I be- 
lieve I have the good fortune to be the first person to recognise 
such a phenomenon. 
I think that gases or vapours issuing quietly from the solar 
surface would tend locally to raise the superincumbent ignited 
vapours. In places where they were most abundantly given out 
the elevation would be greatest, everywhere the gas would leak 
through in streams, producing occasionally such phenomena as the 
flare I have spoken of in Nos. 2 and 3. For a time the ignited 
vapour might, I think, form, as it were, a case for the light 
included gas, which would be to all appearance inflated like the 
animal figure in No. 6. Soon, however, the slightly coherent 
casing would be burst and the gaseous contents would issue freely ; 
the heavier vapours would, of course, to some extent be carried 
off by the gas, but would ‘mainly settle down in small masses. 
Such, I think, is the state depicted in the southern protuberance 
of No. 1. 
I would now draw attention to Plate No.1, and the glare and 
luminous stratum. If that glare be from sunlight, it must, I 
think, be acknowledged that the remaining ray was but small, 
The luminous nearly even stratum then is not the sun ; ; but it is 
intensely bright, so much so, that nowhere is it lost in the solar 
glare. Its height is but small (I estimate it at 7,200 miles), and 
1 believe it to be the mass of heavy luminous vapours, to whose 
elective absorption we owe the Fraunhofer lines in the solar 
spectrum. At the north end of this stratum near the Great Horn, 
it is broken into beads of light; and I am disposed to think 
* These dimensions refer to the projections on a plane perpendicular to 
the visual ray. 
+ This is the same place where Captain Branfill saw beads. 
these are the veritable Baily’s beads, of which I have always 
felt that the description would be difficult to apply to sunlight ; 
I mean the statement which has been made of the light being 
silvery, &c. If these beads are really phenomena of the absorb- 
ing stratum, one can well understand the use of such terms. 
In an addendum, in which the author’s theory is at- 
tempted to be maintained, Major Tennant refers to the 
work which has been done in this country between the 
eclipse and the issue of the report. He considers that the 
sun is surrounded by an atmosphere sufficiently dense to 
reflect the solar light, but it is not explained why a con- 
tinuous spectrum and not the solar spectrum is actually 
reflected; and that the hydrogen is enveloped in a denser 
atmosphere, resisting its diffusion and expansion, but why 
the spectrum of this atmosphere is so simple is not 
explained. 
The author concludes by acknowledging the services 
rendered by Mr. De la Rue in the preparation of the 
report. 
FALE OF A METEORITE 
HE Director of the Meteorological Office has for- 
warded the following extract from a letter from M. 
Coumbary, Director of the Imperial Meteorological Ob- 
servatory at Constantinople for publication :— 
Constantinople, 9 mars, 1870 
Mon cher Monsieur,—Je saisis l’occasion qui m’est offerte pour 
vous transmettre la communication que vient de nous faire M. 
Carabella, Directeur des Affaires Etrangéres du Vilayet de Tri- 
poli de Barbaru. 
“ Tripoli, 2 février, 1870 
“Le Mutasserif de Mourzouk (Fezzan), latitude 26° N., longi- 
tude 12° E. de Paris, nous fait savoir que vers le 25 décembre, 
1869, il est tombé a Vest de la ville, vers le soir, un immense 
globe de feu, mésurant un metre & pew pres de diamitre, et qu ’au 
moment ot il a touché terre il s’en est détaché de fortes étin- 
celles qui, en se produisant, claquaient comme des coups de 
pistolet, et exhalaient une odeur que Yon n’a pas specifiée. 
Cet aérolithe est tombé a peu de distance d’un groupe de plu- 
sieurs arabes, parmi lesquels se trouvait le Chiok-el-Veled de 
Mourzouk. Ceux-ci en ont été tellement éffrayés qu’ils ont im- 
médiatement déchargé leurs fusils surce monstre incompréhensible, 
Son Excellence Ali Riza Pachaa écrit A Mourzouk pour faire 
transporter ici l’aérolithe ; au cas probable ou il soit trop pesant 
on le mettra en piéces; nous vous enverrons tout cela. Ilya 
un mois de voyage dict 4 Mourzouk. Ce n’est donc que dans 
deux mois 4 peu prés que nous pourrons vous faire cette expé- 
dition, S’il peut vous étre de quelque intérét de le savoir, je vous 
dirai que quelques voyageurs du Waddad que j’interrogeais m’ont 
dit que le Sultan du Waddad et tous les grands personnages de 
sa cour ont des poignards, des sabres et des lances faits avec du 
fer tombé du ciel, et qu'il en tombe de grandes quantités dans 
ce pays-la. (Sd.) “LL. CARABELLA ” 
Je crois devoir yous informer qu’au regu de cette lettre et a 
la suite des démarches nécessaires, S.A. le Grand Vizir a bien 
voulu faire donner ordre immeédiatement par télegraphe & Tripoli, 
pour que l’on prenne les mesures nécessaires afin que ce météorite 
nous parvienne intact.—Recevez, cher monsieur, &c., 
(Sd.) ARISTIDE COUMBARY 
NOTES 
On the 5th of March died at Vienna, Joseph Redtenbacher, 
Professor of Chemistry at the University. He was born in 1810, 
and studied under Eichig, conjointly with whom he published a 
determination of the atomic weight of carbon, and several other 
memoirs. His principal merit consists in the discovery of 
acrolein and acrylic acid. Most of his papers were published 
between 1839 and 1848. With his death chemistry in Austria 
passes entirely into younger hands; his colleague, Professor 
Schrober,* the discoverer of amorphous phosphorus, having 
lately been nominated Master of the Mint, and replaced in 
his chair by Tlasiwetz. The succession of Redtenbacher will 
be divided into two parts, and the building of a new laboratory 
