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4. The way in which its appearance changes and flickers. 
When taken in connection with the blackness of the 
moon’s disc, which shows that the corona does not exist or 
owe its existence to matter between the moon and the plate 
on which the photograph is taken, these features show that 
we see on the card the picture of something which actually 
existed in the neighbourhood of the sun ; that the bright 
rays which we see photographed were actually bright rays 
of light-giving matter, standing out from the sun an 
enormous distance. The rifts and general irregularity of 
the picture show that these rays do not come out uniformly 
all over the sun’s surface, but that they are partial and local, 
in some places thinly distributed and in others absent 
altogether. The rays are not all of them straight or per- 
pendicular to the sun’s surface. 
Such bright rays as these cannot be the result of the 
sun’s light or heat acting on an atmosphere or matter circu- 
lating in the form of meteorites. If they are due to the 
action of the sun’s light or heat at all it must be acting on 
matter distributed in the rays we see, for the sun’s light and 
heat coining out uniformly all round would illuminate any 
surrounding matter, if at all, so as to show its figure. 
The picture irresistibly calls up the idea of a radial 
emission. If it is the picture of distributed matter, that 
matter must exist in the form of streams leaving the sun ; 
if it is the picture of some light-producing action, this also 
must exist in the form of an emission from the sun. 
Such then are the extraordinary features of the solar 
corona, and as I stated, they resemble those of an electrical 
corona. Any one who is familar with the various forms of 
electrical disruptive discharge will recognise the general 
