592 
Memoranda of Flood and Storm • [Odtober, 
they are of unusual magnitude and centred upon our globe ; 
but can sun-spots originate a heat-wave with thunder- 
storms ? To comprehend this question, while the recent 
eledtrical commotions were in progress, I one evening turned 
a field telescope upon the sun when on the point of setting, 
and there plain enough were the spots near the centre of the 
disk, — one large and triangular, with a distinctly distinguish- 
able umbra : someone, I understand, has calculated that 
they have been occupying 50,000 square miles of the sun’s 
surface. If, therefore, spedtroscopists do not allow the 
nucleus of the sun to be black hot, peradventure it has been 
reflecting the heat of its photosphere like a cannon-ball 
through its rags and tatters. 
The rose, it is said, was disclosed from the brain of the 
thunder god, so flood and storm may leave a trace of the 
beautiful behind. Since I first saw the banks of the Wey 
the golden day-star has run from a period of few spots to a 
period of many spots, and Nature has run through a cycle 
of change. In 1875 grasshoppers sang merrily over the 
grassy slopes in the autumn ; lately it would be hard to find 
them nearer than Box Hill, where, last year and this, they 
have been in some plenty. The painted lady butterfly was 
common here for a series of years ; the last two years there 
have been none to be seen, and now this spring a few have 
come back. The clouded yellow butterfly, of which only 
one example came under my notice in 1875 and 1881, was 
great game for schoolboys in 1877 ; and in 1881 the whole 
country was a-flame with common yellow underwing moths. 
The last two years the silver writing of slug and snail has 
covered leaf and garden-seat. I remember a similar visita- 
tion in the Highlands during the wet in the early portion of 
the summer of 1868. This year the bookworm has taken 
the place of cricket and cockroach, and multiplied in the 
chinks of our kitchen hearth, — an evil prognostication for 
literature, — and I have noticed the cow parsnip in the hedge- 
row in luxuriant, and I think unusual, blossom. 
