showing the dark spots below. Such a sun would have cooled off in
a week, but would previously have annihilated all life below.

The solar spots being most abundant on the two sides of the equator,
indicates their cyclonic character; the centre of a cyclone is
rarefied, and therefore colder, and cold on the sun is darkness.
M. Faye says: "Like our cyclones, they are descending, as I have
proved by a special study of these terrestrial phenomena. They
carry down into the depths of the solar mass the cooler materials
of the upper layers, formed principally of hydrogen, and thus produce
in their centre a decided extinction of light and heat as long as
the gyratory movement continues. Finally, the hydrogen set free
at the base of the whirlpool becomes reheated at this [Page 92]
great depth, and rises up tumultuously around the whirlpool, forming
irregular jets, which appear above the chromosphere. These jets
constitute the protuberances. The whirlpools of the sun, like those
on the earth, are of all dimensions, from the scarcely visible pores
to the enormous spots which we see from time to time. They have,
like those of the earth, a marked tendency, first to increase and
then to break up, and thus form a row of spots extending along the
same parallel."

[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Solar spot, by Langley.]

A spot of 20,000 miles diameter is quite small; there was one 14,816
miles across, visible to the naked eye for a week in 1843. This
particular sun-spot somewhat [Page 93] helped the Millerites. On the
day of the eclipse, in 1858, a spot over 107,000 miles in extent was
clearly seen. In such vast tempests, if there were ships built as
large as the whole earth, they would be tossed like autumn leaves in