Since, then, we are the children of the sun, and our bodies a product of its rays, as much as the ephemeral insects that its heat hatches from the soil, it is a worthy problem to learn how things earthly depend upon this material ruler of our days. But although we know it does nearly all things done on the earth, and have learned a little of the way it builds up the plant, we know so little of the way it does many other things here that we are still often only able to connect the terrestrial effect with the solar cause by noting what events happen together. We are in this respect in the position of our forefathers, who had not yet learned the science of electricity, but who noted that when a flash of lightning came a clap of thunder followed, and concluded as justly as Franklin or Faraday could have done that there was a physical relation between them. Quite in this way, we who are in a like position with regard to the New Astronomy, which we hope will one day explain to us what is at present mysterious in our connection with the sun, can as yet often only infer that when certain phenomena there are followed or accompanied by others here, all are really connected as products of one cause, however dissimilar they may look, and however little we know what the real connection may be. There is no more common inquiry than as to the influence of sun-spots on the weather; but as we do not yet know the real nature of the connection, if there be any, we can only try to find out by assembling independent records of sun-spots and of the weather here, and noticing if any changes in the one are accompanied by changes in the other; to see, for instance, if when sun-spots are plenty the weather the world over is rainy or not, or to see if when an unusual disturbance breaks out in a sun-spot any terrestrial disturbance is simultaneously noted. [Illustration: FIG. 48.--SUN-SPOTS AND PRICE OF GRAIN. (FROM “OBSERVATIONS OF SOLAR SPOTS.”)]