192 On the Atmospheres of the Earth and the Sun. 



ber of meteors must fall on tlie equatorial than on the polar 

 regions of the sun, making the former the hottest. The 

 meteoric theory will also account for the currents in the 

 sun's atmosphere observed by Mr Carrington. He finds 

 that the spots in the lowest latitudes drift most rapidly from 

 W. to E. Were the sun's atmosphere, like the earth's, acted 

 on by no other motive-power than the unequal heating at 

 different latitudes, the relative direction of the currents 

 would be the reverse of this, in virtue of the well-known 

 principles of the trade-winds and " counter-trades," and this 

 would be true at all depths in the sun's atmosphere. But 

 if meteors are constantly falling into the sun's atmosphere, 

 moving from west to east with a velocity scarcely less than 

 that of a planet at the sun's surface, and in greatest number 

 in its equatorial regions, there is a motive power which is 

 adequate to drive its atmosphere round it from west to east, 

 and with greatest velocity at the equator. The intensely 

 bright meteor-like bodies, which Mr Carrington and another 

 observer simultaneously saw traverse the sun's disc, moved 

 from west to east, and they were almost certainly asteroids 

 falling into the sun." 



Remarks on the Sexuality of the Higher Cryptogams, with 

 a Notice of a Hyhrid Selaginella. By John Scott, Eoyal 

 Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.* 



Modern researches, on the reproductive phenomena of 

 Cryptogams, have induced a number of botanists to accept 

 the doctrine of their sexuality, this function being attri- 

 buted to the organs known as the Antheridia and Pistillidia. 

 Amongst those botanists who deny the sexual hypothesis, 

 as applied to Cryptogams, a difference of opinion exists ; 

 one class attributing a sexual function to the above organs 

 as occurring in the genera Pilularia, Marsilea, Salvinia, and 

 Tsoetes, but strangely arguing, that such an import cannot 

 possibly be attributed to these organs in the other orders ; 

 while another class, — with a more consistent scepticism, — 



* Read before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 10th March 1864. 



