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much towards settling the difficult question of the nature of the corona 

 and red flames and prominences which seem to surround the body 

 of the sun during a total eclipse. Of course the same absorbing 

 interest is not felt in solar eclipses since Mr. Huggins discovered 

 his ingenious device for taking spectroscopic observations of the 

 Corona, etc., without the aid of a total eclipse — in fact at any 

 time when the atmosphere is clear. Thus the sun has been 

 photographed 205 times during the year in England, and by inter- 

 lopating the pictures obtained in India, the number is made up to 

 360. 



We all know the corona is the pale pinkish-white light seen 

 during a total echpse to surround the body of the sun to a distance 

 of some 10 millions ol miles. The whole globe of the sun is also 

 known to be enveloped to a breadth of 50,000 miles, in an atmos- 

 phere of lambent glowing flames of incandescent hydrogen, through 

 which red fountain-like jets of flame are seen to shoot to distances 

 relatively short, but sometimes reaching a height of 300,000 miles. 

 These red jets are now found to occur only on that portion of the 

 sun's disc which corresponds to our sub-tropical zones, and on 

 which alone sun spots are ever seen ; hence it is called the sun- 

 spot zone. Mr. Proctor has a new and most fascinating theory as 

 to these sun-spots (many of them large enough to swallow up 

 thousands of our worlds) and the jets seen on the same zone. He 

 considers them as evidence of stupendous volcanic action in the 

 sun, during which these red jets of denser material are shot out 

 from his surface with a velocity of some 350 to 500 miles a second, 

 sufficient, he calculates, to carry them beyond the influence of the 

 sun's attraction into spcce, where they are now revolving in some 

 other stellar system as meteoric bodies. We pass through a thick 

 belt of such meteors each November, not to mention the millions 

 of shooting stars we encounter at other times. It is, of course, 

 the friction caused by the rapid transit through our atmosphere 

 ■ which ignites them and causes them to glow with such brilliancy. 

 All the other suns which people space are probably, like our own, 

 in a state of violent volcanic activity and shooting forth solid 

 matter from their interiors, and Mr. Proctor believes this to be 

 the source of the countless myriads of meteors which throng our 

 own and other planetary systems. While speaking of the sun, I 

 may mention that the glowing atmosphere (if it can be so called) 

 surrounding this globe having been found to consist mainly of 

 incandescent hydrogen, lends great force to Mr. Norman Lockyer's 

 theory, that all the so-called elementary bodies are capable (under 

 certain given conditions of pressure and temperature) of being 

 resolved into what he behoves to be the one and only really elemen- 

 tary body, hydrogen. 



