This explanation at first appeared extravagant, especially as it was carried so far as to suggest that not merely the corona, but the zodiacal light, the zone of meteors which occasionally drop showers of solid matter upon the earth, and even the “pocket-planets” or asteroids so irregularly scattered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, consist of solid matter thus ejected by the great solar eruptions. Even up to the spring of the present year, when Mr. Lockyer and other leaders of the last year’s expeditions reported their imperfect results, and compared them with various theories, this one was not thought worthy of their attention. Since that time—during the past six or eight months—a change has taken place which strikingly illustrates the rapid progress of solar discovery. Observations and calculations of the force and velocity of particular solar eruptions have been made, and the results have proved that they are amply sufficient to eject solid missiles even further than I supposed them to be carried. Mr. Proctor, basing his calculations upon the observations of Respighi, Zöllner, and Professor Young, has concluded that it is even possible that meteoric matter may be ejected far beyond the limits of our solar system into the domain of the gravitation of other stars, and that other stars may in like manner bombard the sun. This appears rather startling; but, as I have already said, the imagination of the poet and the novelist is beggared by the facts revealed by the microscope, so I may now repeat the assertion, and state it still more strongly, in reference to the revelations of the telescope and the spectroscope. As a sample of these, I take the observations of Professor Young, made on September 7th last, and described fully in “Nature” on October 19.