452 The Fuel of the Sun. [October, 



must be displayed on a hugely exaggerated scale in the solar 

 outbursts, and therefore the hailstone formation should pre- 

 ponderate, especially as the metallic vapours condense more 

 rapidly than those of water on account of the much smaller 

 amount of their specific heat and of the latent heat of their 

 vapours. 



What will become of these volleys of solid matter thus 

 ejected with the furious and protracted explosions forming 

 the solar prominences ? !n order to answer this question, 

 we must remember that the spectroscope, as recently 

 applied, merely displays the gaseous, chiefly the hydrogen, 

 ejections ; that these great gaseous flames bear a similar 

 relation to the solid projectiles that the flash of a gun does 

 to the grape-shot or cannon-ball. Mr. Lockyer says : " In 

 one instance, I saw a prominence 27,000 miles high change 

 enormously in the space of ten minutes ; and, lately, I have 

 seen prominences much higher born and die in an hour." 

 He has recently measured an actual velocity of 120 

 miles per second in the movements of this gaseous matter of 

 the solar eruptions, the initial velocity of which must have 

 been much greater. If such is the velocity of the gaseous 

 ejections, what must be that of the solid projectiles, and 

 where must they go ? A cosmical cannonade thus follows 

 as a necessary result of the conditions I have sketched, and 

 as prominence-ejections of greater or lesser magnitude are 

 continually in progress, there must be a continual outpouring 

 from the sun of solid fragments, which must be flung far 

 beyond the limits of the gaseous prominences. As the 

 luminosity of these glowing particles must be very small 

 compared with that of the photosphere, they will be in- 

 visibk in the glare of ordinary sunshine, but if our eyes be 

 protected from this, they may then be rendered visible, both 

 by their own glow and the solar light they are capable of 

 reflecting. They should be seen during a total eclipse, and 

 should exhibit radiant streams proceeding irregularly from 

 different parts of the sun, but most abundantly from the 

 neighbourhood of the spot regions. As these spot-regions 

 occupy the intermediate latitudes between the poles and the 

 equator of the sun, the greatest extensions of these out- 

 streamings should be N.E. and S.W., and S.E. and N.W., 

 while to the N., S., E., and W. — that is, opposite the poles 

 and equator of the sun — there should be a lesser extension. 

 The result of this must be an approximation to a quadri- 

 lateral figure, the diagonals of which should extend in a 

 N.E. and S.W., and a S.E. and N.W. direction, or there- 

 abouts. I say " thereabouts," because the zone of greatest 



