ceasing to hold office are known to the Church authorities alone. It is enough to say that they are partly connected with physical indisposition, partly with private matters with which the public has nothing to do. I believe now, as I have always believed, that the Church of England possesses within herself the secret which may yet win back an errant world into the fold of Christian faith. In ceasing to hold office as a Christian clergyman, I do not cease in my allegiance to Jesus Christ or to the Church He founded; and all assertions to the contrary are quite without foundation.

I am, Sir, &c.,

AMBROSE BRADLEY.

It will be seen that this epistle was couched in the most ambiguous terms; it was perfectly true, yet thoroughly misleading, as indeed it was meant to be. When he had written and posted it, Bradley felt that he had reached the depth of moral humiliation. Still, he had not the heart just then to say anything which might do injury, directly or indirectly, to the Establishment in which he had been born and bred.

(To be continued.)

L

A GREAT SUN-SPOT.

AST November an enormous sun-spot, or rather a great group of spots enclosed within one penumbral region, appeared on the northern hemisphere of the sun. It was so large as to be very easily discernible by the unaided eye, a circumstance not, indeed, very unusual, but still not happening so frequently but that the occurrence of such a spot is worthy of attention. The appearance of this great region of disturbance was also most remarkable. Large streaks and masses of the most brilliant white were intermixed with the spots, four large ones, and several small ones, which were enclosed within the penumbral (or dark but not black) region of disturbance. These bright or faculous masses and streaks, as well as the spots themselves, changed from day to day, almost from hour to hour, in shape and position. Remembering the enormous scale on which these changes were taking place, and the intense heat of the masses thus rushing hither and thither with velocities compared with which those recognised in the most tremendous of our hurricanes are almost as rest, we see that a most stupendous disturbance was at work on the sun's surface, a disturbance such as would have sufficed to destroy in a few hours, perhaps minutes, the whole frame of this earth. Placed in the midst of that perturbed region, the vast globe on which we live would have first been tossed hither and thither like a leaf before the wind, but presently melting and then turning into vapour, her whole mass would have been driven through the solar atmosphere as but the breath of a hurricane there, and lost amidst myriads of other such windrushes in that mighty furnace.

There are few questions more perplexing to astronomers than those relating to the solar spots. We have, indeed, learned much respecting these remarkable phenomena; but all who have followed the progress of discovery, know that the mystery of their origin, growth, and development, is much greater than it seemed when as yet little was known.

Take, for instance, Schwabe's important discovery that sun-spots wax and wane in size and number in the great spot period of-how many years shall we say? it seemed clear there were about ten, till

Wolff showed the period was longer, and Broun disputed his result; but roughly we may say-ten or eleven years. It is certain, whatever the true length of the period, that there is a systematic increase and diminution in the number of sun-spots, in a period sometimes running up to fifteen or sixteen years, at others lasting about eight or nine years, but averaging between ten and eleven years.

Now, is it not clear that this peculiarity, so far from helping us to understand the sun-spots, is in reality a new difficulty to be explained? Of course, like all other difficulties, it is in one way an assistance. It enables us to reject certain theories which otherwise might occupy our attention. But the first effect produced by the addition of a new phenomenon such as this to those we have to interpret, is that of increased perplexity, a perplexity not to deter us from further inquiry, but rather to encourage us to persevere.

Again, when it was supposed that the sun-spot period was about as long as the period in which Jupiter circuits round his orbit, it was natural to suppose that that giant planet, whose mass exceeds twice and a half the entire mass of the rest of the solar family, produced these changes in the sun's condition. It had always struck me as a very remarkable circumstance (if this view were accepted) that the mere slight change of distance from the sun which Jupiter undergoes, a change in the proportion only of ten to eleven, should produce so marked a change in the sun's condition. Let us suppose the change to be akin to tidal action, which will give the most favourable results for the theory that Jupiter produces the change: then we must take the cubes of the numbers just mentioned, or the proportion 1,000 to 1,331; but when the real numbers are taken (which is desirable where we are going to raise them to so high a power as the cube), we find the proportion to be 1,000,000 to 1,335,974, or nearly as three to four. This proportion seems to show that whatever effect was ex erted when Jupiter was farthest from the sun, an effect alınost exactly one-third greater should be produced when Jupiter was nearest to the sun. This is, doubtless, a considerable difference, but not sufficient to account for what we seem to recognise, namely a great number of spots at the time of maximum, and no spots at all at the time of minimum, disturbance. A very much greater difference ought to arise from the mere combination of the tide waves due to Jupiter and Venus and the antagonism of these tide waves, in other words, ought to be manifest at intervals of one-fourth the times of successive conjunction of Jupiter and Venus; but this would be roughly a period of some fifty-seven days, or less than two months. Assuredly, no such period of marked variation has yet been discovered.

But we need not further discuss this theory of planetary influence, when we note that, now the sun-spot period has come to be better understood, it is seen to have no correspondence whatever with the movements of Jupiter. The sun has been most marked by spots when Jupiter has been at his farthest from the sun, at his nearest to that orb, at his mean distance, either when moving from farthest to nearest or when moving from nearest to farthest ; while the mean duration of the sun-spot period is now known to be many months shorter than the year of Jupiter. It would be contrary to all sound principles to hold on to the planetary theory of the origin of the sun-spots after this practically decisive evidence against it. Those who do still hold on to it ought to present the theory in some such words as this, -The planets seem to generate the solar spots in some way, though we know no reason why they should, and can discover no connection whatever between the numbers of sun-spots and the positions of the planets.

I may quote here a remark of Professor Young's, in his excellent treatise on the sun, which exactly agrees with my own views on this subject. "It is very difficult," he says, "to conceive in what manner the planets, so small and remote, can possibly produce such profound and extensive disturbances on the sun. It is hardly possible that their gravitation can be the agent, since the tide-raising power of Venus upon the solar surface would be only about one-750th of that which the sun exerts upon the earth; and in the case of Mercury and Jupiter the effect would be still less, or about one-thousandth of the sun's influence on the earth. The sun (apart from the moon) raises a tide, on the deep waters of the earth's equator, something less than a foot in elevation, so that making all allowances for the rarity of the materials which compose the photosphere, it is quite evident that no planet-lifted tides can directly account for the phenomena. If the sun-spots are due in any way to planetary action, this action must be that of some different and far more subtile influence."

It would not indeed have helped us very much towards the interpretation of sun-spots, if it had been shown that they are in some way produced by planetary influences, instead of all the evidence lying the other way. As matters actually are, however, we may set the planets altogether on one side in this matter,—or at least admit that whatever influence they exert can be but indirect.

Another possible interpretation of the sun-spots has been suggested, which may here occupy our attention, as having at least some degree of evidence in its favour.

It is known that the whole of inter-planetary space is occupied

by meteor streams. Our earth in her circuit around the sun traverses several hundreds of known systems,-or rather she traverses the orbit-regions belonging to them. Meteors may not be always present in the particular parts of these orbital rings through which the earth passes. But when the earth chances to cross one of them at the time when the meteor flight belonging to the region is at or near the place of passage, there occurs a shower of shooting-stars, due in reality to the encounter of the earth with certain members of the meteor stream, which are there and then reduced to the form of vapour and as it were absorbed by the earth. Now, if the earth, traversing a mere thread of space compared with the wide domain of the sun, thus traverses hundreds of meteor systems, it is obvious that were they spread with tolerable uniformity throughout the solar domain, we must estimate their numbers by hundreds of millions,-not hundreds of millions of meteors, be it observed, but hundreds of millions of meteor systems, each containing countless millions of individual meteoric masses.

But this is far from being all. The meteoric systems are not distributed with anything like uniformity throughout the solar domain. So far as we can judge from the arrangement of cometic orbits, and the known connection between comets and meteor systems, we must infer that there is a great increase in meteoric wealth in the sun's neighbourhood. The number of meteor systems having orbits passing no nearer to the sun than our earth's track, must be small indeed compared with the number whose orbits at their nearest to the sun lie between the distances of the earth and Venus; this number must be small compared with the number of meteor systems whose points of nearest approach to the sun lie between the distances of Venus and Mercury; and lastly, this number, and indeed the total number of meteoric systems thus considered, must be very small compared with the number of those whose orbits at their nearest to the sun lie within the orbit of Mercury. Of all this we have no direct proof. But it is true of comets, and we know that meteor systems follow in the track of comets, while we have every reason to believe that there is no comet which has not its train of meteoric attendants, no meteor system which is not thus associated with some comet, either now or formerly existing (for astronomy has witnessed the dissipation of one comet, in whose train meteors travelled before its destruction, and on whose quondam orbit meteor streams still travel in countless millions).

This being so, it is natural that some astronomers should have