c. B. warring. 65-(35) 



brightness, reveals a scene of fiercest and most incessant 

 tumult — masses flung up with velocities sufficient to 

 carry them to the height of many thousand miles in a 

 minute, cyclones compared with which the most terrific 

 tornadoes known on the earth are as the gentlest of 

 breezes. One hundred and twenty miles an hour is per- 

 haps the greatest velocity of any wind on the earth ; in 

 the sun, three hundred and sixty thousand miles an 

 hour is not uncommon. Such storms, whose rairt-drops 

 are molten metals, lash the surface into waves thousands 

 of miles in height. 



In addition to these evidences of violent disturbances, 

 must be mentioned the remarkable, and as yet unaccount- 

 able, fact that the equatorial portion of the sun's surface 

 revolves about the sun's axis in a period about one and 

 a half days shorter than do the regions nearer the poles. 

 In other words the equatorial part gains in twenty-live 

 days one hundred and fifty thousand miles on a spot, say 

 in latitude 30°, which gives a river of fire, if we suppose 

 it to extend only 15° each side of the equator, two million 

 miles wide rushing around the sun at the rate of two 

 hundred and fifty miles an hour, or more than twice as 

 fast as the fiercest tornado on the earth. If any one 

 thinks life possible in a world like that, I add, in the 

 words of Prof. Newcomb in his astronomy : " The best 

 sustained theory of the interior of the sun is the start- 

 ling one that it is neither solid nor liquid, but gaseous ; 

 so that our great luminary is nothing more than an 

 immense bubble." "The strong point," Prof. New- 

 comb goes on to say, ' ' in support of this gaseous theory 

 of the sun's interior is, thai it is the only one which 

 explains how the sun's heat and light are kept up." 



But even should this "best-sustained theory" turn 

 out to be false, and should there be a solid nucleus, any 

 cloud-covering would be upheaved, and thrown down, 

 and whirled about in cyclones by forces which are seen 

 to be constantly in operation. The upper and lower 

 atmospheres would be commingled, and their tempera- 

 ture, if ever different, would become uniform. We are 

 safe, therefore, in concluding that no manner of being 

 known to science lives in or on the sun. 



If this be admitted, then all force is gone from the 

 argument which claims that the planets are inhabited 



