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Diminution of the Sun. -Parhelia

lation, applied to the spots which have been discovered on the other planets, has in like manner made us acquainted with their rotation. "As to the nature of these solar spots, it is absolutely unknown. Herschel is of opinion, that luminous clouds float in the inflamed atmosphere of this luminary, as clouds of vapour float in ours. He supposes that the body of the sun is opaque and dark; and that the black spots observed there at intervals, are merely the summits of very elevated mountains, which the solar clouds permit us to see between their openings. Other astronomers think that the globe of the sun is on fire, and that the spots are merely immense scoria, launched on the surface of that mass by some terrible explosions, of which our terrestrial volcanoes afford but a feeble picture. But whatever may be thought of these conjectures, it seems sufficient for us to know, that the solar spots are trifling compared with the immense mass of that body; and that the eruptions, of which they are perhaps the effect, take place at too great a distance from our earth to produce the least effect upon it. Generally speaking, the physical state of our little world is incomparably more stable and steady than its moral state."

DIMINUTION OF THE SUN. - Baron Lindeneau, who recently published a work on the diminution of the solar mass says, that the sun may have been imperceptibly subject to successive diminution since the science of astronomy has been cultivated. Baron Lindeneau supposes the sun's diameter to be 800,000 miles, 4,204,000,000 feet, or nearly 2000 seconds. We have not, he observes, hitherto possessed any instrument for measuring the diameter of the heavenly bodies to a second. The sun may therefore diminish 12,000 of its diameter, or 2,102,000 feet, without the possibility of being perceived. Supposing the sun to diminish daily two feet, it would require three thousand years to render the diminution of a second of its diameter visible.

Account of those singular Appearances, called, PARHELIA