When Galileo directed his telescope to the heavens, when Secchi and Huggins studied the chemistry of the stars by means of the spectroscope, and when Warren De la Rue set up a photoheliograph at Kew, we see that a progress in the same direction as before, in the evolution of our conception of the universe, was being made. Without definite expression at any particular date, it came to be an accepted fact that not only do earthly dynamics apply to the heavenly bodies, but that the laws we find established here, in geology, in chemistry, and in the laws of heat, may be extended with confidence to the heavenly bodies. Hence arose the branch of astronomy called astronomical physics, a science which claims a large portion of the work of the telescope, spectroscope, and photography. In this new development it is more than ever essential to follow the dictum of Tycho Brahe—not to make theories until all the necessary facts are obtained. The great astronomers of to-day still hold to Sir Isaac Newton’s declaration, “Hypotheses non fingo.” Each one may have his suspicions of a theory to guide him in a course of observation, and may call it a working hypothesis. But the cautious astronomer does not proclaim these to the world; and the historian is certainly not justified in including in his record those vague speculations founded on incomplete data which may be demolished to-morrow, and which, however attractive they may be, often do more harm than good to the progress of true science. Meanwhile the accumulation of facts has been prodigious, and the revelations of the telescope and spectroscope entrancing. 12. THE SUN. One of Galileo’s most striking discoveries, when he pointed his telescope to the heavenly bodies, was that of the irregularly shaped spots on the sun, with the dark central _umbra_ and the less dark, but more extensive, _penumbra_ surrounding it, sometimes with several umbrae in one penumbra. He has left us many drawings of these spots, and he fixed their period of rotation as a lunar month. It is not certain whether Galileo, Fabricius, or Schemer was the first to see the spots. They all did good work. The spots were found to be ever varying in size and shape. Sometimes, when a spot disappears at the western limb of the sun, it is never seen again. In other cases, after a fortnight, it reappears at the eastern limb. The faculae, or bright areas, which are seen all over the sun’s surface, but specially in the neighbourhood of spots, and most distinctly near the sun’s edge, were discovered by Galileo. A high telescopic power resolves their structure into an appearance like willow-leaves, or rice-grains, fairly uniform in size, and more marked than on other parts of the sun’s surface. [Illustration: SOLAR SURFACE. As Photographed at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, showing sun-spots with umbræ, penumbræ, and faculæ.]