On the 1st of September, 1859, Messrs. Carrington and Hodgson were observing the sun, one at Oxford and the other in London. Their scrutiny was directed to certain large spots which, at that time, marked the sun’s face. Suddenly a bright light was seen by each observer to break out on the sun’s surface, and to travel, slowly in appearance, but in reality at the rate of about 7,000 miles in a minute, across a part of the solar disc. Now it was found afterwards that the self-registering magnetic instruments at Kew had made at that very instant a strongly marked jerk. We learned, also, that at that moment a magnetic storm prevailed at the West Indies, in South America, and in Australia. The signalmen in the telegraph stations at Washington and Philadelphia received strong electric shocks; the pen of Bain’s telegraph was followed by a flame of fire; and in Norway the telegraphic machinery was set on fire. At night great auroras were seen in both hemispheres. It is impossible not to connect these startling magnetic indications with the remarkable appearance observed upon the sun’s disc. But there is other evidence. Magnetic storms prevail more commonly in some years than in others. In those years in which they occur most frequently, it is found that the ordinary oscillations of the magnetic needle are more extensive than usual. Now when these peculiarities had been noticed for many years, it was found that there was an alternate and systematic increase and diminution in the intensity of magnetic action, and that the period of the variation was about eleven years. But at the same time, a diligent observer had been recording the appearance of the sun’s face from day to day and from year to year. He had found that the solar spots are in some years more freely displayed than in others. And he had determined the period in which the spots are successively presented with maximum frequency to be about eleven years. On a comparison of the two sets of observations, it was found (and has now been placed beyond a doubt by many years of continued observation) that magnetic perturbations are most energetic when the sun is most spotted, and _vice versâ_. For so remarkable a phenomenon as this, none but a cosmical cause can suffice. We can neither say that the spots cause the magnetic storms nor that the magnetic storms cause the spots. We must seek for a cause producing at once both sets of phenomena. There is as yet no certainty in this matter, but it seems as if philosophers would soon be able to trace in the disturbing action of the planets upon the solar atmosphere the cause as well of the marked period of eleven years as of other less distinctly marked periods which a diligent observation of solar phenomena is beginning to educe. (From the _Cornhill Magazine_, June 1868.) _OUR CHIEF TIME-PIECE LOSING TIME._