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238 THE FIERY FOUNTAINS OF THE SUN.

of her arched neck, one kiss of her velvet muzzle, although
perhaps I should have been laughed at for my pains.

I am now employed in attendance upon the family of
one of my former officers. The gentleman is still living
and is very kind to me, as indeed they all are. It is a
little way out of London. I am allowed to do what I
like about the garden and stables, which you may suppose
(I am seventy-seven) is not much.

This, sir, is my story. If it pleases you and the ladies
and gentlemen who read your magazine—why it will
please me.

THE FIERY FOUNTAINS OF THE SUN.
\HETHER we consider the sun in itself as

the mainspring of our system, or whether
we regard it as a type of those other suns
which in countless numbers people the
firmament, a sublime interest attaches to
every discovery and every research connected with the
solar globe. We know, or we should know, that we are
dependent upon the sun’s vivifying and fructifying
influences for all those products of the earth which supply
us with the necessaries and the luxuries of life. The food
we eat is of the sun: it is either vegetation ripened by
the solar beams, or it is animal flesh which has been
directly raised from that vegetation. The wines and
drinks that we imbibe derive their qualities from sun-
beams also. The clothing that we wear is obtained
either from vegetable fibres or from the skins of animals
that feed on pastures enriched by solar influence. We
know, too, from the teachings of modern science that
well nigh every power, be it wind, water, or fire, which
we turn to account in driving machinery or transporting
our bodies and our merchandise at will, is derived more
or less immediately, but with scaree an exception pri-
marily, from the central luminary and furnace of our
system. Winds are caused by the rarefaction of our
atmosphere by the sun’s warmth. Water-power (in all
cases save those in which the tides are concerned) owes
its origin to aqueous vapours, raised from the sea by the
sun’s rays, and afterwards condensed into rains, which
form mill-streams and rivers. And as to coal, which is
the principal source of our present power, modern research
has fully confirmed Stevenson’s assertion, that it is
simply “ bottled sunshine.”

Surely we can scarcely imagine a loftier subject for
philosophical contemplation than the stupendous source
of all these agencies; and every fact that we can glean
towards an understanding of the nature of the heat and
light generating processes at work upon the sun, however
remote it may at present seem from resolving the great

| mystery, cannot but be fraught with interest of the most

| engrossing character. Wonderful indeed have been the

advances which our knowledge has made in connexion
with the sun’s constitution within the past decade. We
| have learnt that the solar globe is in literal truth a
| furnace, where “the elements burn with a fervent heat ae
that it is covered by an ocean of incandescent metallic
vapours, such as we may see at the mouth of a blast
furnace, and perhaps nowhere else; and that it is further
surrounded by an envelope of glowing gas, which is the
theatre of commotions that in their nature and in the
magnitude of the forces concerned in their causation are

quite beyond our thorough realization. It is the purport
of this article to describe some of the visible effects of
these commotions, and to lead the reader, as far as pen
ungifted with the poet’s power is able, towards a con-
ception of their awful grandeur.

Writing in December last upon the phenomena of solar
eclipses, we made passing allusion to the prominent
masses of glowing red matter which rise from the
luminous surface of the sun, which masses were first
discovered during a solar eclipse, and which were till
lately only glimpsed when those phenomena occurred,
It is these red prominences that are now about to engage
our attention, and wonderful in the highest degree are
the facts that we shall have to relate concerning them,

But it behoves us first to say a few words about the
method of observing them, as they are now daily observed,
without a solar eclipse. Their light, compared to that of
the sun, is extremely feeble. They are composed of a
gas (hydrogen) that does not possess a high degree of
luminosity, and they are close to the blindingly brilliant
photosphere of the sun. The sun must, therefore, be put
out, virtually, for us to behold them. In an eclipse this
is done by the intervening moon, which hides the solar
disc and allows whatever red masses may be upon its
edge at the time to be seen. Astronomers, at one time,
in their eagerness to observe them in the intervals
between eclipses, tried various plans for creating these
obscurations artificially: they nicely hid the sun by dises
of metal in their telescopes, and thus allowed only the
region just beyond his edge to meet their eye; but the
glare of our atmosphere was too much for the red
prominences. Then they cast the image of the sun upon
& screen, as in the camera obscura, and, cutting a hole in
the screen so as to let the image of the solar dise, as it
were, fall through, they made the extreme edge of the
dise fall upon or coincide with the edge of the hole: thus
they expected to see the hole fringed with the promi-
nences. But they were disappointed: the glare was
overpowering. They gave up attempts for years. _By-
and-by, when the spectroscope had begun to reveal its
wonders, this happy thought occurred simultaneously,
though independently, to two distinguished experts with
that instrument:—The spectroscope sifts and assorts
mixed lights, and shows differently coloured luminosities
in different parts of its field of view. It enables us to
look at the red, the green, the blue, the yellow com-
ponents of a source of light separately, for it places them
apart and shows us order where to the common eye there
is confusion. Now the greatest brilliance of sunlight is
due to its yellow rays: these are what out-dazzle the red
prominences. . If, then, we direct a powerful spectroscope
to the edge of the sun and turn out of its field as much
as possible of the dazzling yellow glare, we ought to see
the prominences in their integrity. The two observers
alluded to in effect did this, and they were rewarded by
a sight which had only hitherto been enjoyed by the
fortunate gazers on a solar eclipse. _ They saw, after a
little adaption of instrumental means, the red prominences
in all their beauty and all their suggestive variety ; and
henceforth these objects were submitted to constant
scrutiny. For those who may find difficulty in grasping
the rationale of this selective viewing of differently
coloured objects, we may remark that it is somewhat
analogous to observation through coloured glasses, which
absorb, or prevent the view of, all colours but their own.

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