power of that controlling king; not only with light, but also with
gravitating power.

But come to more ponderable matters. If we look [Page 81] into our
western sky soon after sunset, on a clear, moonless night in March
or April, we shall see a dim, soft light, somewhat like the
milky-way, often reaching, well defined, to the Pleiades. It is
wedge-shaped, inclined to the south, and the smallest star can
easily be seen through it. Mairan and Cassini affirm that they have
seen sudden sparkles and movements of light in it. All our best
tests show the spectrum of this light to be continuous, and
therefore reflected; which indicates that it is a ring of small
masses of meteoric matter surrounding the sun, revolving with it and
reflecting its light. One bit of stone as large as the end of one's
thumb, in a cubic mile, would be enough to reflect what light we see
looking through millions of miles of it. Perhaps an eye sufficiently
keen and far away would see the sun surrounded by a luminous disk,
as Saturn is with his rings. As it extends beyond the earth's orbit,
if this be measured as a part of the sun, its diameter would be
about 200,000,000 miles.

Come closer. When the sun is covered by the disk of the moon at
the instant of total eclipse, observers are startled by strange
swaying luminous banners, ghostly and weird, shooting in changeful
play about the central darkness (Fig. 32). These form the corona.
Men have usually been too much moved to describe them, and have
always been incapable of drawing them in the short minute or two
of their continuance. But in 1878 men travelled eight thousand
miles, coming and returning, in order that they might note the
three minutes of total eclipse in Colorado. Each man had his work