456 The Fuel of the Sun. [October, 



But how, the reader will ask, can such solids, ejected 

 from the sun, acquire orbital paths around him. " We have 

 been taught that the parabola is the necessary path of such 

 ejections." Mr. Proctor has evidently reasoned in this 

 manner, for in last April number of " Fraser's Magazine " 

 he says, that some of my ideas are " opposed to any known 

 laws, physical or dynamical," that " there is nothing abso- 

 lutely incredible in the conception, that masses of gaseous, 

 liquid, or solid matter should be flung to a height exceeding 

 manifold that of the loftiest of the coloured prominences; 

 whereas it is not only incredible, but impossible, that such 

 matter should in any case come to circle in a closed orbit 

 round the sun." 



More careful reading would have shown Mr. Proctor that 

 I have considered other conditions besides those of the text- 

 books, that the case is by no means one of simple radial 

 projection from a fixed body into free space and undisturbed 

 return. I have distinctly stated that " the recent ejections 

 may have any form of orbit within the boundaries of the 

 conic sections," from a straight line returning upon itself, 

 due to absolutely vertical projection, to a circular orbit pro- 

 duced by the tangental projection of such curving promi- 

 nences as the ram's horn, &c. The outline of the zodiacal 

 light would be formed by the termination or aphelion portion 

 of these excursions, or of such a number of them as should 

 be sufficient to produce a visible result." 



Again, speaking of the asteroids, in Chapter 14 I 

 state that " I should have expected a still greater elonga- 

 tion and eccentricity in some of them, and such orbits 

 may have existed ; but an asteroid with an orbit of 

 cometary eccentricity that would in the course of 

 each revolution cross the paths of Mercury, Venus, the 

 Earth, and Mars, in nearly the same plane, and dive 

 through the thickly scattered zodiacal cluster, both in going 

 to the sun and returning from it, would be subject to dis- 

 turbances which would continue until one of two things 

 occurred. Its tangental force might become so far neu- 

 tralised and its orbit so much elongated, that finally its peri- 

 helion distance should not exceed the solar radius, when it 

 would finish its course by returning to the sun. On the 

 other hand, its tangental velocity might be increased by 

 heavy pulls from Jupiter, when slowly turning its aphelion 

 path, and be similarly influenced by friendly jerks in 

 crossing the orbits of the inferior planets ; and thus its 

 orbit might be widened, until it ceased periodically to cross 



