478 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



structure of which was fully described) undoubtedly Archaean, and 

 probably rather early in that division. The rocks of the micaceous 

 group have considerable resemblance to the greenish and lead- 

 coloured schists of Holyhead Island and the adjoining mainland of 

 Anglesey, and of the Menai Strait. 



Two outlying areas of serpentine, omitted in his former paper, were 

 described — one at Polkerris, the other at Porthalla. The latter 

 shows excellent junctions, and is clearly intrusive in the schist. The 

 author stated that he had reexamined a large part of the district 

 described in his former paper, and had obtained additional evidence 

 of the intrusion of the serpentine into the sedimentary rock with 

 which it is associated. This evidence is of so strong a nature that 

 he could not conceive the possibility of any one who would carefully 

 examine the district for himself entertaining a doubt upon the 

 matter. 



2. " Notes on some Upper Jurassic Astrorhizidse and Lituolidae." 

 By Dr. Eudolf Hausler, F.G.S. 



LIV. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON MR. C. "VT. SIEMENS'S NEW THEORY OF THE SUN. 

 BY M. G. A. HIRN. 



r T , the grave objection brought forward by M. Faye against 

 -*- Mr. Siemens's new theory of the conservation of the solar 

 energy, another, also a very serious one, may be added. This objec- 

 tion may be summed up in few words. 



Up to the present time there is no general agreement as to the 

 real value of the Sun's temperature. Pere Secchi carried it to 

 millions of degrees. Other physicists, especially in France, lowered 

 it to about twenty thousand degrees. According to the magnificent 

 experiments of Mr. Langley (of Alleghany) this latter amount is, 

 at any rate, a minimum. What is certain then, starting from the 

 fine memoirs upon dissociation of our lamented colleague Henri 

 Sainte-Claire Deville, ; s that none of the chemical compounds that 

 we know upon our Earth could exist at the surface of the Sun. 

 All, even those which are most refractory in our laboratories, would 

 be dissociated and reduced to their constituent elements. And 

 this is what is admitted in M. Faye's theory of the Sun. 



The natural and direct consequence of the preceding fact is, that 

 the chemical compounds which Mr. Siemens supposes to be disso- 

 ciated by degrees in space by the solar radiation, might certainly, 

 in returning under the action of gravity and in the elementary state 

 towards the central body, become reformed, and regenerate the 

 heat expended in their dissociation in space ; but this recombination 

 could only be effected at an appreciable distance from the solar 

 photosphere, and the compounds reproduced, on falling into the 

 bosom of the latter, would be again completely dissociated. This 

 action, therefore, would cause the expenditure of all tlie heat 



