492 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



to flow out as is done with sulphurous acid. Science thus pos- 

 sesses in this new refrigerator powerful means of investigation. 



Tbe question, as a whole, has no technical difficulty to overcome ; 

 its realization from the present is only a question of the material 

 means at the disposal of the experimenter. — Comjates Rendus, April 

 21, 1884. 



ON ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY AND THE SUN'S ACTION AT A 

 DISTANCE. BY W. HOLTZ. 



The author refers to the papers on this subject by W. Siemens 

 in which no mention is made of him, although he had in 1877 

 already expressed the opinion that the electricity of storms is per- 

 haps to be attributed to an electrical action of the sun at a distance. 

 Incited by Siemens's memoir to further thought on the matter, he 

 is led to the following view, which materially differs from that of 

 Siemens. 



The sun, as Zollner showed, could only act at a distance in case 

 one of the electricities developed in it were dissipated in space. 

 Assuming that the latter is the negative electricity, both the earth 

 and the moon will acquire it. The earth is thereby exposed to the 

 action of positive electricity at a distance from the sun, and the 

 negative action from the moon. In consequence of the former, 

 the surface of the earth must be constantly negatively electrified 

 during the day and positively electrified on the night side. The 

 action of the moon in reference to the side turned towards it and 

 away from it would be similar, not opposite ; so that at the time of 

 the new moon there would be an enfeeblement, and at the time of 

 full moon a strengthening of the inductive action. Aqueous 

 vapour, as it forms, takes with it the electricity of the earth, and 

 this is led to the upper regions of the air. If any horizontal layer 

 is electrified even to the smallest extent, the atmosphere in which 

 countless such layers are heaped up may show appreciable pheno- 

 mena of tension. The greater violence of the storms in equatoreal 

 regions is due to the fact that the inductive action is here of course 

 the strongest, and also the evaporation most abundant. The aurorse 

 boreales are to be explained by the fact that it is preferably the 

 poles at which opposite electricities meet. 



The difficulty of establishing this hypothesis by experimental 

 observation is increased by the fact that all the causes above men- 

 tioned act simultaneously, as well as by the fact that, along with 

 this, secondary inductive actions of the already electrical masses of 

 air come into play. Only in specially constructed buildings and by 

 the aid of special apparatus would it be possible in the course of 

 time to decide this question. The author proposes therefore to 

 arrange electrical observatories (that is, special institutions for ob- 

 serving the electricity of storms), which at the same time would 

 lead to a solution of the important astronomical question of the 

 sun's electrical action at a distance. — Beibldtter cler Physik, vol. viii. 

 p. 148. 



