43 
STRANGE NEWS ABOUT THE SOLAR 
PROMINENCES. 
By RICHARD A. PROCTOR, B.A., F.R.A.S. 
Author of “The Sun,” “Other Worlds than Ours,” &c. 
[PLATE LXXXI.] 
O UR knowledge respecting the sun has increased so rapidly 
of late, that it is by no means easy for the astronomer to 
place in their due position all the facts which have become 
known. Some of these facts are indeed altogether strange and 
unexpected ; they seem almost inexplicable at a first view, and 
the more carefully they are studied the more striking do they 
appear. Quite recently we have received from two different 
sources the narrative of observations which bear in a most im- 
portant manner on the interpretation of solar phenomena. 
From Fr. Secchi, of Rome, we receive the records of a long 
and careful series of researches, confirming the startling an- 
nouncements made by Zollner and Respighi, and adding other 
information of extreme interest. From Professor Young, of 
America, we have the account of a single solar outburst, but 
the most wonderful by far that has yet been witnessed, and 
affording highly significant evidence respecting the mighty 
forces at work in the sun’s globe. 
I propose to consider, here, the bearing of the information 
thus recently obtained, not merely on the subject of the solar 
prominences, but on those questions respecting the physical 
condition of the sun’s globe on the one hand, and the nature of 
the corona on the other, which have recently attracted so much 
attention. For I conceive that the great fact which is be- 
coming more and more clearly discerned as observation pro- 
gresses is this, that the phenomena presented by the sun’s 
globe, or rather by the photosphere we see, are intimately 
associated with the phenomena presented by the solar corona; 
and that the bond of union thus associating the two series of 
phenomena is to be recognised in the processes at work in the 
