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The Constitution of the Sun . 
untouched, unseen, unperceived by sensation or thought, 
must be a void and formless chaos, until the first living eye 
gives it shape and colour, the first living organ of touch 
endows it with tangible solidity, the first living ear wakes 
the dumb to speech and song. 
II. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN. 
By R. Lamont. 
CLi. 
S N a former paper (“Journal of Science ” for October) I 
tried to prove shortly that sunlight had an eleCtric 
origin ; in faCt that the sun might be likened to the 
core of a huge dynamo-machine, and the outer matter be- 
longing to our system to so many field-magnets, and that, 
owing to the revolution of the latter round the former, the 
attraction which existed between them was continually being 
broken, and that the breaking of such attraction resulted in 
a continual flow of luminous eleCtric currents between the 
sun and planetary matter. I propose now to investigate the 
constitution of the sun with the view of further proving the 
probable truth of these speculations. 
When viewed through a powerful telescope the sun does 
not present the same uniform brilliancy over his whole sur- 
face which we see when we look at him with the unaided 
eye. He is seen to be made up of luminous masses irregu- 
larly interspersed throughout a less luminous background, 
while on both sides of his equatorial belt are seen irregular 
black spots which emit little or no light. These spots, which 
consist of a dark central portion, or umbra, gradually blend 
into the brighter portions of the sun, where they are 
generally surrounded by very brilliant streaks of light or 
faculce . 
During a total eclipse the sun’s atmosphere is seen to 
contain strange cloud-like masses or red-flame prominences , 
some of which appear detached from him, while others 
appear as if they formed part of his surface. Surrounding 
the entire surface, and reaching far out into space, the corona 
is seen as a bright halo of silver-white light. 
