Earth's Rocks to Meteorites. 235 



There are curved lines in abundance in the coronal light, bat 

 as figured by observers and in the photographs, they seem 

 to be entirely unlike any such projections of conic sections. 

 Only by a "violent treatment of the observations can the 

 curves be made to represent such projections. They look 

 more as though they were due to forces at the sun's surface 

 than at his centre. If these complicated lines have any 

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

 gest rather the phenomena of comets' tails than meteoroide 

 streams or sporadic meteors. 



The hypothesis that the long rays of light which some- 

 times have been seen to extend several degrees from the 

 sun at the time of the solar eclipse, are meteor streams seen 

 edgewise seems possibly true, but not at all probable. 



The observed life of a meteor, with few exceptions, is 

 only a second, or at most a few seconds. Near the begin- 

 ning of this century, small meteors were looked upon as 

 some form of electricity; while the view that they origin- 

 ate in the earth's volcanoes even gains support from a few 

 men of science at the present day, among whom is the dis- 

 tinguished Astronomer Boy a I of Ireland. The difficulties 

 of this hypothesis, however, are exceedingly great. 



No one claims that the meteors of the star-showers nor 

 that their accompanying comets come from the earth's vol- 

 canoes. To ascribe a terrestrial origin to meteorites is then 

 to deny the relationship of the shooting star and the stone- 

 meteor. Every reason for their likeness is an argument 

 against the terrestrial origin of the stones. 



To suppose that the meieors came from any planets that 

 have atmospheres, involves difficulties not unlike to, and 

 equally serious with, those of a terrestrial origin. 



The solar origin of meteorites has been seriously urged, 

 and deserves a serious answer. 



The first difficulty which this hypothesis meets is, that 

 solid bodies should come from the hot sun. Besides this, 

 they must have passed without destruction through an 

 atmosphere of immense thickness, and must have left the 

 sun with an immense velocity. 



Then there is a geometric difficulty. The meteorite shot 



