Such will be the case with us also if we can but maintain the present coal famine during one or two more winters, especially if we should have the further advantage of some very severe weather in the meantime. Hence the cruel wishes above expressed. The coal famine would scarcely be necessary if we had Russian winters, for in such case our houses, instead of being as they are, merely the most uncomfortable in North Europe, would be quite uninhabitable. With our mild winters we require the utmost severity of fuel prices to civilize our warming and ventilating devices. “BAILY’S BEADS.” TO THE EDITOR OF THE _Times_. SIR,—The curious breaking up of the thin annular rim of the sun which is uncovered just before and just after totality, or which surrounds the moon during an annular eclipse, has been but occasionally observed, and some scepticism as to the accuracy of Baily’s observations has lately arisen. Having attempted an explanation of the “beads,” I have looked with much interest for the reports of the eclipse of 1870, for, if I am right, they ought to have been well seen on this occasion. This has been the case. We are informed that both Lord Lindsay and the Rev. S. J. Perry have observed them, and that Lord Lindsay has set aside all doubts respecting their reality by securing a photographic record of their appearance. My explanation is that they are simply sun-spots seen in profile—spots just caught in the fact of turning the sun’s edge. All observers are now agreed as to the soundness of Galileo’s original description of the spots—that they are huge cavities, great rifts of the luminous surface of the sun, many thousands of miles in diameter, and probably some thousand miles deep. Let us suppose the case of a spot—say, 2,000 miles deep and 10,000 miles across (Sir W. Herschel has measured spots of 50,000 miles diameter). When such a spot in the course of the sun’s rotation reaches that part which forms the visible edge of the sun, it must, if rendered visible, be seen as a notch; but what will be the depth of such a notch? Only about 1-430th of the sun’s diameter. But the apparent depth would be much less as the edge or rim of the spot next to the observer would cut off more or less of its actually visible depth, this amount depending upon the lateral or east and west diameter of the spot and its position at the time of observation. Thus, the visible depth of such a notch would rarely exceed one thousandth of the sun’s apparent diameter, or might be much less. The sun being globular, the edge which is visible to us is but our horizon of his fiery ocean, which we see athwart the intervening surface as it gradually bends away from our view. So small an indent upon this edge would, under ordinary circumstances of observation, be rendered quite invisible by the irradiation of the vast globular surface of the glaring photosphere, upon which it would visually encroach.