CHAPTER II.

ald the keeper. The tankards, etc., are | take form and consistency. The faculty the veritable trophies that are worth the of reading the minds of other men is a winning; for they mean energy and ad- gift that might be fatal or helpful, accordventure, and the excitement of success ing to circumstances or temperaments. the only things that make life worth the It is certain, at least, that it would work a living. If I know myself, I'm nothing of social revolution, and upset all the existing a visionary: I believe in the blessings of arrangements of Providence. As it was, riches, and realize their anxieties too, as Mr. Venables had been rattling on in much as anybody; but I should be sorry utter heedlessness, and he never guessed all the same to have been born to a for- how far his chatter might have a grave intune to a great fortune, that is to say. fluence on his fortunes. And so the Of course I should go steadier as well as three, after a pleasant evening, went to quicker if I had a certain amount of bul- bed, unconscious of all that was meant to lion to ballast me. Now all that silver them by that merry meeting at Glenmeans to me the romance of an extremely conan. agreeable existence. Our Uncle Moray there has had far more than his fair share of success and fun; and if he died tomorrow, he has every reason to be contented. There are not many men who bave had the luck to find their way to wealth through jungles and spice-gardens through cordons of Chinese junks and fleets of Malay proas. Why, even in the way of recreation and sport, tiger-shooting must be decidedly preferable to deerstalking, though it is fortunate that Donald does not hear me blaspheming. But hit or miss, lose or win, you may depend upon it, Master Leslie, that excitement is everything, or pretty nearly so. Whether we are to carry off the stakes or no, at least we are sure of the pleasures of the game."

Leslie smiled good-humoredly at his companion's long-winded rhapsody. As for Moray, though the young man had merely spoken in the light exhilaration of a restless and generous spirit, had he laid himself out to flatter and please his senior, he could hardly have succeeded more | thoroughly. Moray had himself been ardent and enthusiastic, though with an eminently practical bent of mind and a resolute determination of purpose. He, too, had delighted in adventure in his time, and the ancient fires were still glowing in their ashes. He had loved bold speculations for their own sake and the better that there was a spice of danger in them. And besides that, there was some thing in Venables's careless talk, in the readiness to welcome trials which might turn to temptations, that helped to reconcile himself to his past, and to soothe certain doubts and regrets which had been casting their shadows across his happiness. It pleased him, too, to remember that money meant power that he could give his sprightly young nephew the helping hand he wanted; and, moreover, other vague ideas regarding him began to

A BREAK NECK SHOOTING EXPEDITION.

WE say emphatically that June is the most enjoyable month in the Highlands, always supposing the weather to be conformable. And Highland weather is so capricious, that we may be lucky when we least expect it. There is no shooting in June - there is no deer-stalking. But then the fishing of all kinds should be in its very prime, which gives you a pretext for enjoying the glories of the scenery. The trees are in the freshest richness of their foliage; the grass is enamelled by the early wild-flowers; the bilberrries, the crowberries, the cranberries, and many other berries, are putting out their brightest shoots; the bracken is bursting forth among the first bells of the foxgloves, and as both of Clenconan's guests, in their different ways, were keen and even passionate admirers of nature, they never found the time hang heavy on their hands. Moray was vexed at the arrival of his daughter being delayed, owing to the indisposition of the lady who was to be her chaperon as far as Perth. But the young men were comparatively indifferent to the advent of the heiress, and only expressed a decent amount of sympathy. To tell the truth, being very happy as they were, they philosophically dreaded any change in the habits of the establishment. They did as they pleased; they went abroad when they liked; and though the dinner was a movable feast, depending on the hour of their return, the cook might be relied upon to come satisfactorily to time, independently of the hands of the clock. What with his fishing-rod and his sketchbook, Jack Venables could always make himself thoroughly contented. When the trout were rising freely, his basket filled rapidly; he could cast a fly to the approval of Donald himself, and under the

But a day came, in the second week of their sojourn, when the mercurial Venables felt bored, and he did not scruple to confess it. The fine weather had broken; leaden clouds lay heavy on the bosom of Lochconan, veiling the view of the opposite cliffs. The rapid fall of the barometer gave warning of a violent storm, though as the fall had been sudden, the storm might be a passing one. As the little party were seated at breakfast, a peal of thunder seemed to burst among the chimney-pots and shake the room. Then discharge followed discharge in swift succession. The clouds were rent by the vivid flashes of the forked lightning; the rain came down in torrents, the big drops plumping in the sullen waters of the lake like showers of lead sent from the summit of a shot-tower. Then gusts of wind, sweeping in circles down from the mountains, succeeded to the preternatural calm; in places the lower half of the black cloud-curtain was lifted and blown aside, while it hung motionless as before in the shelter of the cliffs; and through gaps and rifts you caught glimpses of the hills, lighted luridly for some seconds by the fires of the lightning; while all the time the echoes were being awakened far and near, and ere one roar had died away in remote rumblings, another had come to swallow the distant mutterings. It was Byron's thunderstorm, and not much in miniature; and it was Venables, and not Leslie, who made the obvious quotation —

tuition of that skilful veteran he was rap- a success; while in the intervals the idly being initiated in the special mys- thoughts that were wandering far away teries of mountain sport. When the trout found ample occupation for his fertile were in no mood to take, whether in the fancy. loch, in the lakelets, or in the streams, he seldom cared to persevere, and fell back on his brushes and color-box. Excitement in one shape or another was everything to him. He had a rare facility of touch, a wonderful instinct for color; and the excitement he found in the ever-changing lights and scenes was unfailing. He was as happy in transferring a landscape bathed in sunshine and flecked with shadows to his block, as in switching the small brown trout over his shoulder; and his pulses beat nearly as quick to the lurid glories of a thundery sunset as when running a Salmo ferox on his trolling rod where the lake broke away into the rapids. As for Leslie, he took his pleasures more contemplatively, though not more sadly. In rallying him about his love for poetry, Moray had touched his strength or his weakness. He was a born poet, in perpetual sympathy with the poetical sides of things, though, so far as the world knew, his poetry had hitherto found no expression. He might be born for great things, or he might have been born to dream away remarkable talents. In the mean time he could make himself placidly happy among the scenes which brought the exhilaration of enjoyment to his companion. No one could deny that there was a great deal in him. Not only had he had a distinguished career at the university, but he could generally say the right thing at the right moment, though his remark might be somewhat slow of coming; if he would hang over a repartee, it seldom missed fire, and there was pretty sure to be a playful snap in it when it did come. Nevertheless, superficial observers of natures antipathetical to his own, might have set him down for a muff or a prig, especially if they had made his acquaintance in Highland shooting quarters. He rarely handled a gun himself, though he liked to follow a shooting party. Made very much after the fashion of a young Henry VIII., his somewhat bulky and cumbrous person would have adapted itself with difficulty to the inequalities of difficult ground in following out an awkward stalk; and when he did essay to throw a fly, his line was apt to fall in coils upon the water. Conscious of his own shortcomings, he neither cared to correct them nor to court failure. But he would lie on the bank for hours, watching Venables at work, his handsome features flushing over a struggle and

And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,

etc.

It was a grand spectacle while the thunderstorm lasted, and Jack had every rea. son to be pleased with it. He strode up and down the room, returning perpetually to the windows. He rubbed his hands, and expressed unqualified admiration of the effects, till the solemnity of the disturbance oppressed even him, and he relapsed into silence in sympathy with his companions. But the thunderstorm passed away, though the rain continued to come down in torrents; and if he still paced the morning-room at intervals, he was chafing at the enforced confinement.

"You certainly are the most restless and impatient of mortals, Jack," remarked Moray good-naturedly. "Why, young man, if you cannot bear a single day's

From The Nineteenth Century.
THE SUN'S CORONA.

STRAIGHT are the gates and narrow are the ways by which the motions which come to us from what is without can reach our consciousness. Of the many octaves of vibrations which go forth from such a body as the sun, not more than one octave can so affect our eyes as to result in sight. Further, the very conditions of sight forbid us to see, even with the aid of instruments, those smaller parts of nature of which all things are built up, and upon which their properties depend. We cannot become spectators of atoms and molecules. Considered under this aspect of things our eyes are dull, not keen. A like limitation holds true of our other senses. But besides this excessive straitness of the gates of our consciousness there exist many external barriers about us; we are walled around. The external barrier which concerns us chiefly now presents itself in the circumstances in which we find ourselves in relation to all nature outside the earth.

We live at the bottom of a deep ocean of air, and therefore every object outside the earth can only be seen by us as it looks when viewed through this great depth of air. Professor Langley has shown recently that the air mars, colors, distorts, and therefore misleads and cheats us to an extent much greater than was supposed. He considers that the light and heat absorbed and scattered by the air, and the minute particles of matter floating in it, amount to no less than forty per cent. of the light falling upon it. In consequence of this want of transparency, and of the presence of finely divided matter always more or less suspended in it, the air when the sun shines upon it be comes itself a source of light. Professor Langley says:

This illuminated aërial ocean necessarily conceals from us, by overpowering them, any sources of light less brilliant than itself which are in the heavens beyond. From this cause the stars are invisible at midday. If the air could be withdrawn, then the heavens above us, even at noon. day, would be black, except as they were spangled by the brighter stars, and were illuminated by the clustering smaller stars and nebula which are not separately visible to us.

The illuminated air also conceals from us certain surroundings and appendages of the sun which become visible on the very rare occasions when the moon com. ing between us and the sun cuts off the sun's light from the air where the eclipse is total, and so allows the observer to see the surroundings of the sun through the cone of unilluminated air which is in shadow. It is only when the aërial curtain of light is thus withdrawn that we can become spectators of what is taking place on the stage beyond. The magnificent scene never lasts more than a few minutes, for the moon passes, and the curtain of light is again before us. On an average, once in two years this curtain of light is lifted for from three to six minutes. It is not needful to say how difficult it is from these glimpses at long intervals even to guess at the plot of the drama which is being played out about the sun.

The purpose of this article is to give an account of a method of observation by which it is possible to overcome the barrier presented to our view by the bright screen of air, and, this bright screen notwithstanding, to watch from day to day the changing scenes taking place behind it in the sun's surroundings. The object of our quest is to be found in the glory of radiant beams and bright streamers intersected by darker rifts which appears Roughly speaking, we may say that we re- about the sun at a total solar eclipse. ceive on the average at the sea level as much The corona about the sun at these times light from the sky as we do from the sun itself; is seen to possess, especially in the photogetting more light from the sun at midday graphs taken at an eclipse, a structure of than from the sky, but more in the morning great complexity, which is indeed the more and afternoon from the sky than from the sun. puzzling in its intricate arrangement of All my investigations, whether through ob servations at the sea level or at an altitude of rays, curved in different directions, and nearly 15,000 feet, lead me to believe it prob-varying greatly in brightness and extent, able that the mean absorption of light (and of heat also) by our atmosphere is at least double that which is customarily estimated, and also to conclude that fine dust particles, both near the surface and at a great altitude, play a more important part in this absorption, both general and selective, than has been hithertofore supposed.*

* American Journal of Science, September, 1884.

because, though we seem to have a flat object before us, the corona exists really in three dimensions. If we were dwellers in Flatland, and the corona were a kind of glorified catherine-wheel, the task of interpretation would seem less difficult. But as we are looking at an object having thickness as well as extension, the forms seen in the corona must be more or less

and the sun, it is obvious that the planet as it approaches the sun comes in before the corona, and shuts off the light which the corona sends to us. Now at such a time the observer sees the sky at the place behind which the planet is to be darker than the adjoining sky that is to say, that the cutting off of the coronal light by the planet has caused a sensible diminution in the brightness of the sky at that spot. It follows certainly that the part of the sky about the sun behind which the corona is situated is in a small degree brighter than the adjoining parts; and very near the sun in a degree not far removed from the eye's power of distin

modified, according to their position in relation to the line of sight, by the effects of perspective. This consideration tells also that the increase of intrinsic brightness of the corona towards the sun's limb is much less than that of the apparent brightness, of which no inconsiderable part must be due to the greater extent of corona in the direction of sight as the sun is approached. We know from the strongly diverse appearances which the corona has presented at different eclipses that the corona has not a permanent structure, but is an object subject to great, and probably continual, change. These particulars will suffice to show how true are the words of Professor Young: "Un-guishing areas which differ by very small less some means be found for bringing out the structures round the sun which are hidden by the glare of our atmosphere, the progress of our knowledge (concerning them) must be very slow."

degrees of brightness. It would be perhaps not too much to say that the corona would be always visible when the sky is clear, if our eyes were more sensitive to small differences of illumination of adjacent areas.

Mention should be made of one exception, unique so far as the writer knows: his friend Mr. John Brett, A.R.A., tells him that he is able to see the corona in a telescope of low power.

The spectroscopic method, now so well known, by which the bright prominences, or flames at the sun's limb, may be seen without an eclipse, fails for the corona, because a part only of the coronal light is resolved by the prism into bright lines, and of these lines no one is sufficiently bright and coextensive with the corona to enable us to see the corona by its light, as the prominences may be seen by the red, the blue, or the green line of hydrogen. The corona sends to us light of three kinds: (1) light which the prism resolves into bright lines and which has been

The previous attempts which have been made from time to time to observe the corona without an eclipse have been based | mainly upon the hope that if the eye were protected from the intense direct light of the sky, and from all light other than from the sky immediately about the sun, then the eye might become sufficiently sensitive to perceive the corona. These attempts at producing an artificial eclipse have failed because it was not possible to place the screen where the moon comes, j outside our atmosphere, and so keep in shadow the part of the air through which the observer looks. The latest attempts have been made by Professor Langley at Mount Etna, and at Mount Whitney, fifteen thousand feet high, and also by Dr. Copeland, astronomical assistant to Lord Crawford, on the Andes. Professor Lang-emitted by luminous gas; (2) light which ley says in a letter to the writer: "I have tried visual methods under the most favorable circumstances, but with entire non-success." Dr. Copeland observed at Puno, at a height of 12,040 feet. In his report he says: "It ought to be mentioned that the appearances produced by the illuminated atmosphere were often of the most tantalizing description, giving again and again the impression that my efforts were about to be crowned with success." There are occasions on which the existence of the brighter part of the corona may be visually detected without an eclipse. The brightness of the sky near the sun's limb is due to two distinct factors -the air-glare, and the coronal light behind it, which M. Janssen considers to be brighter than the full moon. When Venus comes between the earth

gives a continuous spectrum and which has come from incandescent liquid or solid matter; (3) reflected sunlight, which M. Janssen considers to form the fundamental part of the coronal light.

The problem to be solved was how to disentangle the light of the corona from the air-glare which is mixed up with it, or, in other words, how by some means to give such an advantage to the coronal light that it might be able to hold its own sufficiently against the air-glare for our eyes to distinguish the corona from the bright sky.

When the report reached this country in the summer of 1882 that photographs of the spectrum of the corona taken dur ing the eclipse in Egypt showed that the coronal light at the earth, as a whole, is strong in the violet region of the spec