574 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
at almost every little trading place in the country; showing that they were 
easily and cheaply manufactured ; but where or by whom ? 
If any of your readers can give any real light on this subject, it may please 
others besides A. L. C. 
METEOROLOGY. 
TORNADO MYSTERIES. 
CAPT. SILAS BENT. 
St. Louis, Nov. 28, 1883. — Your article of to-day upon the "Tornado 
Mystery " is so suggestive, and discusses a theory which I am so heartily con- 
vinced is correct, that I venture to offer you a communication sent to the Courier' 
journal of Louisville some twelve months ago. 
"I have read with much interest Mr. G. W, Tinsley's theory as to the cause 
of the "sun spots" published in your issue of the 26th inst. I shall not under- 
take to discuss that theory, but will beg your indulgence for a few comments 
upon that point in Mr. T's article wherein he assumes that the sun is enveloped 
in a flame of fire. 
This I know is the accepted theory of astronomers, but it has never been 
satisfactory to my mind as being possible in the due order of nature ; for in that 
order, the operations of physical laws are uniform whether on the sun or- 
on the earth. A flame of fire means combustion, and combustion means 
the consumption of fuel. So, notwithstanding astronomers say that the 
combustion of the sun is fed by invisible bodies falling into it from stellar 
space, yet when we reflect that each of the fixed stars of the universe is 
itself a sun, as large or larger than our own, and that they are all governed and 
sustained by the same laws, it is incredible that there should be floating through 
space sufficient matter to keep these myriads of suns in perpetual combustion, 
without diminution or extinction, and yet be invisible to our telescopes, particu- 
larly as the computations of these same astronomers show that our whole plane- 
tary system would not keep up the combustion of the sun for more than fifty 
or a hundred years if fed to it piecemeal. 
Again, if the sun is a ball of fire and radiates its heat for the sustenance of 
its planets, then the earth alone is just at that fortunate distance from the sun 
which gives it the temperature that sustains hfe in beings organized as the inhab- 
itants of the earth are, and which beings so organized could not exist on any 
other planets, owing to their necessarily diff'erent temperature arising from their 
varying distances from the sun. 
This would make the earth the only habitable planet for beings of like or- 
