124 



Dr. W. Huggms. 



upon Mr. Lewis Swift when lie observed the corona of 1878 : — " I 

 was irresistibly led to the conclusion that the corona, whatever may 

 be its nature, is not a solar atmosphere, nor an inflow of meteoric 

 matter, as many suppose, but rather an outflow of something."* 

 These considerations appear to me to be of great weight in support of 

 the view, that though some meteoroid and some cometary matter may 

 fall into the sun, the corona consists essentially of matter coming 

 from the sun. 



(3.) We have now to consider under what dynamical conditions 

 matter coming from the sun can take on forms such as those we see 

 in the corona, and can pass away to such enormous distances, in 

 opposition to gravitation, which is so powerful at the sun. 



There is another celestial phenomenon, very unlike the corona at 

 first sight, which may furnish us with a clue to the true answer to 

 this question. The head of a large comet presents us with luminous 

 streamers and rifts and curved rays, which are nob very unlike on a 

 small scale some of the appearances which are always present in and 

 are peculiar to the corona. We do not know for certain the con- 

 ditions under which these cometary phenomena take place, but the 

 only theory upon which they can be satisfactorily explained, and 

 which now seems on the way to become generally accepted, attributes 

 them to electrical disturbances, and especially to a repulsive force 

 acting from the sun, probably electrical, which varies as the surface, 

 and not like gravity, as the mass.f A force of this nature in the case 

 of highly attenuated matter can easily master the force of gravity, 

 and as we see in the tails of comets, blow away this thin kind of 

 matter to enormous distances in the very teeth of gravity. 



If such a force of repulsion, acting from the sun, is experienced by 

 comets, it must also be present near the sun, and may well be expected 

 to show its power over the matter ejected from the sun's surface. ;£ 



* Eeport Total Solar Eclipses of 1878 and 1880, Washington, p. 231. 



t "Proc. Roy. Inst.," vol. x, p. 9; also Brediehin, "Annales de l'Observatoire de 

 Moscou," vol. v, No. 2, p. 39; " Astr. Nachr.," No. 2411 ; and papers by Faye in 

 the " Comptes Rendus." Stokes, "On Light as a Means of Investigation," p. 70. 

 et seq. O. Reynolds, " On Cometary Phenomena," " Mem. Lit. and Phil. Soc," 

 Manchester, vol. v, p. 192. 



J As a contribution to the history of opinions involving more or less distinctly 

 the idea of repulsion, it may be well to give the following words by Professor Young 

 (" Amer. J. of Science," vol. i, May, 1871, p. 7) : — "On the one hand, that of Pro- 

 fessor Norton and Mr. Proctor, whose views regarding these rays (the long faint 

 rays) are nearly identical, and represent them to be streams of matter, similar to 

 cometary substance or auroral." In a foot-note Professor Young says further : — 

 " Since my name has sometimes been referred to in connexion with the so-called 

 ' Auroral Theory of the Corona,' it is proper for me to state that I make no claim 

 to be its originator. So far as I know, Professor Norton was the first to work out 

 and publish a connected theory of the subject, basing his conclusions largely upon 



