Anne Gilchrist

“ The astronomer has, above all other students of nature, to contend with the confused evidence the senses give in regard to motion and position, furnishing us not with facts at all, but only with the materials out of which facts have slowly to be elaborated. It took five or six thousand years to ascertain whether our earth move or the sun move; astronomy being throughout the whole period more or less cultivated by one nation or another. ”

“ The size of the solid globe within that wonderful light or photosphere, which latter alone is what our eyes behold, we do not know. There is one fact which may perhaps indicate that the sun’s atmospheres do occupy a vast depth; namely, that in proportion to its bulk the sun is four times lighter than the earth.
Each science has its own special class of difficulties to contend with: formidable dragons guarding the magician’s castle. ”

“ They are the presiding genii in nature’s grand chemical laboratory. They set the winds in motion; draw up out of the earth mere watery vapour, which, shaped by those winds into a canopy of cloud, they paint with varying hues. ”

“ And when they reach man’s domain, he has to some extent power over them. By cunningly-devised experiments, he dissolves the union, that he may search more thoroughly into the nature of each, and through this better knowledge find out perhaps something more about their birthplace. Thus even light, besides what we may call its direct revelations, has yielded to subtle modes of questioning a fragment of knowledge as to the nature of the photosphere. ”

“ These, if they were independent bodies revolving round the sun, would not disappear immediately after passing the edge, lost in the light of the photosphere, as the dark spots would: they would be seen a little longer. And that this does not happen, is conclusive that they are something belonging to the sun. Whilst the earth takes only twenty-four hours, the sun takes twenty-five days to revolve upon his axis, or thereabouts,—for, owing to changes which take place in the actual size and movements of the spots themselves, the learned are not quite agreed as to the exact period of rotation. ”

“ But if you say, can the sun be inhabited? Yes, certainly: and that too by beings of an organisation not wholly unlike our own, is my answer.” That dense and cloudy inner atmosphere we have spoken of may effectually protect it from the dazzling light of the photosphere, and conduct but little of its heat. ”

“ It has been said that the Condor eagle could fly round the earth in a week if helped by favouring winds. That kingly bird would have to spread his wings for nearly seventy-three years to reach the sun, for the journey is ninety-five millions of miles long. ”

“ Light, we may remind the reader, is of two kinds—natural and polarised. Polarisation is a hard word. It means the modification a ray of light undergoes in certain circumstances, through which it acquires different properties on one side to what it has on the other. ”

“ The chemist, the meteorologist, still more the physiologist, are baffled by the silence and secresy with which nature prepares her effects, and by the multitude of causes conspiring to or modifying one result. ”

“ If we want to know the size of a distant object, we must first find how far off it is. We know familiarly that its apparent position depends upon the situation of the observer; that if we walk half a mile, the church steeple which was in one direction at starting, seems in quite another now. ”

“ The distance known, we can understand that it was a comparatively easy task to find out the actual size of the great parent who sends his bright offspring to vivify we know not yet how many worlds. It is as large as fourteen hundred thousand globes like ours rolled into one. This includes the atmospheres which surround the sun ”

“ Some years, the sun is scarcely a single day free from them: in others, there will be none on perhaps a hundred out of the three hundred and sixty-five. These variations are periodical. For five or six years the spots progressively increase in number and size, and then for five or six more diminish ”