300 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
curtains of tlie Bast, ancl tlie crimson sunset still make its 
appearance, whilst both will preserve their usual tints as if 
this violent agitation proceeded not on the surface of the sun. 
The statistics of the sun’s weight and distance and size are 
so well known, that it may here appear out of place to repeat 
those data. As an illustratiou, however, of its overwhelming 
size, we may state, that if all the planets of the system were 
rolled up into one mighty ball, still, however, this would appear 
a mere pigmy in comparison with the vast globe of the sun, 
which would till a space some six hundred times larger than 
this great collection of matter. If the heavy rocks and minerals 
of the interior planets were macadamized and mixed up with 
the clay and sand and water of the exterior ones, it would be 
found that, light as are the materials of which the sun is com- 
posed, its mass would outweigh not less than 738 of such 
fictitious globes piled up in the opposite scale. It would take 
more than 350,000 globes like our earth to weigh it down. 
The ocean of fire which surrounds it is more than 20,000 
times greater than the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and more 
than 12,000 times greater than the area of the whole earth. 
The domain over which it presides would be considered mar- 
vellously great were we ignorant of the vastness of the starry 
spaces, or of the infinite number and distances of those lumin- 
ous objects of which the sun in all its glory represents but a 
single unit. In comparison with those spaces, which a ray of 
light takes years to traverse, how small is our distance of ninety- 
five millions of miles from the central body, — how small even 
the distance of the exterior planet Neptune, when, represent- 
ing the vast dimensions of the sun by a ball only two feet in 
diameter, and preserving the same scale throughout, we should 
have Neptune about the size of a plum at a distance of a mile 
and a quarter from the body round which it revolves ! 
In the telescopic aspects of the other planets we perceive 
many striking similarities with the economy of our own globe : 
moimtains on Mercury and Venus, snows on Mars, trade-winds 
on Jupiter and Saturn; the alternations of day and night, and 
many signs of the existence of atmosphere, on all the planets. 
They are illumined by the same light, warmed by the same 
heat, and pursue them courses around the same fixed star as the 
earth. But another world opens when the attention is directed 
towards the sun. The blue and limpid atmosphere of the 
earth bears no analogy with the dense and fiery crust which 
surrounds the solar orb. Immense openings, more like the 
bursting forth of a volcano, where the lava is thrown aside in 
torrents and the whole surface is a sea of liquid and seething 
fire, have no similarity with the feathery clouds or drifting 
masses of light vapour which are seen in the atmosphere of 
