259 
manner, by either of two able scientific men — viz., Mr Carrington of 
the Observatory, Red Hill, and Mr Hodgson at Highgate. 
The respective observations of these gentlemen are to be found 
in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for No- 
vember 1859, and seem quite sufficient to prove, after making all 
due allowance for the different instrumental methods employed in 
either case, and the peculiar nature of the subject observed, that on 
September 1, at about 11 h. 18 m. a.m., Greenwich time, two small 
telescopic bodies of light, in close proximity, and elongated in the 
direction of their motion, suddenly burst into view on the surface of 
the sun, not very far from its central portion, than which they were very 
much brighter. They moved side by side in arcs nearly parallel with 
the plane of the ecliptic ; first for a time increasing in brightness, 
and then again gradually fading away, so as to be quite lost in about 
five minutes after their first appearance. Though apparently on the 
surface of the sun, yet that appearance was considered to arise from 
optical projection only, as they did not alter the shape of a group of 
large black spots, which lay directly in their paths. They must, 
nevertheless, have been exceedingly close to the surface; and on that 
supposition, the paths which they described during their period of 
visibility must, from their angular extent, have measured about 
35,000 miles, giving a mean rate of 117 miles per second. 
The first remark that we may make on the facts of observation, 
save that nothing so momentary has ever been witnessed before by 
astronomers, is, that 117 miles per second constitutes a velocity so 
exceedingly great, that we can only look to the gravitation influences 
of the sun for its efficient producing cause. Nevertheless, we are 
at the same time bound to acknowledge, that the full rate of orbital 
motion, for a body nearly in contact with the surface of the sun, is 
rather over 276 miles per second; and the rate of falling to the sun 
from infinite space, considerably more. Evidently, then, something 
prevented these bodies of September 1 from moving at their full rate, 
and produced a retardation in their orbit equal to 159 miles a second, 
to take Professor W. Thomson’s form of the gravitation theory as 
the more probable. 
What that retarding something was, it is not so much to our 
purpose now to inquire, as long as we can show that it is not alto- 
gether a baseless supposition, to assume the existence of any extensive 
material belonging to the sun, outside his visible, luminous surface. 
