304. TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ‘ARTICLES. 
trary conceptions springing from the brilliant imagination of the 
ancient Greek philosophers, or in the relics of the labors of the 
most famous astronomers of the Alexandrian school, which can, even 
by:a forced comparison, be likened to the results I am announcing. 
These results, let us loudly proclaim, are due entirely to the united 
efforts of observers of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as, in part, 
to those of our contemporary astronomers. 
Let us here notice a remark which we shall presently have occa- 
sion to apply when we endeavour to determine the physical consti- 
tution of the stars. 
If the matter of the solar photosphere be liquid, and so the rays: 
issuing from its border be polarized, we shall not merely see colors 
in-each of the two images given by the polariscope, but they will be 
different at different points of the contour. If the highest point in 
one of the images is red, the point diametrically opposite in this 
image will also be red. But the two extremities of the horizontal 
diameter will both be green, and so on. If, then, we proceed to re- 
unite, in a single point, the rays proceeding from all parts of the 
sun’s limb, even after their decomposition in the polariscope, the 
mixture will be white. Such a constitution of the sun as I am here 
establishing will equally serve to explain the existence on its surface 
of spots not dark but luminous. The former, which are designated 
facule (facules), were first observed by Galileo ; the others, of much 
smaller extent, and for the most part circular in form, were seen by 
Scheiner* and by him denominated macule (lucules), and give to the 
sun’s surface a sparkling appearance. I may refer (a somewhat sin- 
gular circumstance) the discovery of one of the principal causes of 
these faculea and macule to an administrative visit I paid to a 
fashionable shop on our Boulevards. 
‘*T have reason to complain of the gas company,” said the pro- 
prietor of the establishment; ‘they ought to turn on to my goods the 
broadest part of this bat-wing jet, and yet often, through the negli- 
gence of their agents, they place it so as to throw the light edge- 
ways.’ ‘Are you quite sure,” replied one of the assistants, ‘“ that 
in this position the flame throws less illumination.than in the other?” . 
The doubt appearing ill-founded, and, I may say, even absurd, exact 
experiments were resorted to, and it turned out that a flame throws 
* Scheiner’s claim. to the discovery is: doubtful. John: Fabricius and Galileo were the 
first: observers of them, nearly contemporaneously, aud Harriott also, a little later. made? 
the same observations:independently.—(Zrans.) 
