“The bearing which these experimental results may have upon the theory of the solar corona I prefer to leave to others to decide. That they may prove a suggestive guide in the study of solar phenomena seems not unreasonable to expect.” [Illustration: ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES REPRESENTING TWO TYPES OF SOLAR CORONÆ] [Illustration: SOLAR CORONA OF 1922 Photographed by the Lick Observatory Expedition to Australia] In a communication read later before the New York Academy of Sciences I was much bolder, having previously discussed the subject with my friends at Johns Hopkins and with the late Professor Young, the famous astronomer at Princeton. I soon found myself advocating strongly the electromagnetic theory of solar phenomena. A German professor, Ebert by name, a well-known authority on electrical discharges in gases, took me very seriously indeed, which was very flattering, but he claimed priority. I had no difficulty in establishing my priority through the columns of _Astronomy and Astro-Physics_, one of whose editors was George Ellery Hale, to-day the distinguished director of Mount Wilson Observatory. I was indeed fortunate to make his acquaintance during that period when both he and I were very young men. His influence prevented me from running wild with my electromagnetic theory of solar phenomena. Thanks to the splendid astro-physical researches at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California under Doctor Hale’s direction, we know to-day that enormous electrical currents circulate on the surface of the sun, and we know also from other researches that negative electricity is shot out from all hot bodies, even from those not nearly as hot as the sun, and that the solar corona is, in all probability, closely related to this electrical activity on the sun.