In the same year an English amateur astronomer, _Richard Christopher Carrington_ (1826-1875), commenced a series of solar observations which led to some remarkable discoveries. From observations on the spots, Carrington discovered that while the Sun’s rotation was performed in 25 days at the equator, it was protracted to 27½ days midway between the equator and the poles. In 1858 Carrington demonstrated the fact that spots are scarce in the vicinity of the solar equator, but are confined to two zones on either side, becoming scarce again at thirty-five degrees north or south of the equator. Contemporary with Carrington was _Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Spörer_ (1822-1895), who was born in Berlin in 1822 and died at Giessen, July 7, 1895. He commenced his solar observations about the same time as Carrington, and independently discovered the Sun’s equatorial acceleration. From observations at his little private observatory at Anclam in Pomerania, continued at the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, Spörer demonstrated a remarkable law regarding sun-spots. This law is thus described by a well-known astronomer: “The disturbance which produces the spots of a given sun-spot period first manifests itself in two belts about thirty degrees north and south of the Sun’s equator. These belts then draw in toward the equator, and the sun-spot maximum occurs when their latitude is about sixteen degrees; while the disturbance gradually and finally dies out at a latitude of eight or ten degrees. Two or three years before this disappearance, however, two new zones of disturbance show themselves. Thus, at the sun-spot minimum there are four well-marked spot-belts,—two near the equator, due to the expiring disturbance, and two in high latitudes, due to the newly beginning outbreak.” These remarkable discoveries, which resulted from the investigations of Schwabe, Carrington, and Sporer, are a brilliant example of what may be done by amateurs in astronomy. At the time when Carrington and Spörer were pursuing these researches, the spectroscope came into use as an astronomical instrument, and since 1859 solar astronomy has been almost entirely spectroscopic. Before we can rightly understand the principles of spectroscopic astronomy, we must go back to the life and work of its founder—Joseph von Fraunhofer.