Here we have compared years with years; let us next compare minutes with minutes. Thus, to cite (from Mr. Proctor’s work) a well-known instance: On Sept. 1, 1869, at eighteen minutes past eleven, Mr. Carrington, an experienced solar observer, suddenly saw in the sun something brighter than the sun,--two patches of light, breaking out so instantly and so intensely that his first thought was that daylight was entering through a hole in the darkening screen he used. It was immediately, however, made certain that something unusual was occurring in the sun itself, across which the brilliant spots were moving, travelling thirty-five thousand miles in five minutes, at the end of which time (at twenty-three minutes past eleven) they disappeared from sight. By good fortune, another observer a few miles distant saw and independently described the same phenomenon; and as the minute had been noted, it was immediately afterward found that recording instruments registered a magnetic disturbance at the same time,--“at the very moment,” says Dr. Stewart, the director of the observatory at Kew. “By degrees,” says Sir John Herschel, “accounts began to pour in of ... great electro-magnetic disturbances in every part of the world.... At Washington and Philadelphia, in America, the telegraphic signal men received severe electric shocks. At Boston, in North America, a flame of fire followed the pen of Bain’s electric telegraph.” (Such electric disturbances, it may be mentioned, are called “electric storms,” though when they occur the weather may be perfectly serene to the eye. They are shown also by rapid vibrations of the magnetic needle, like those we have illustrated.) On Aug. 3, 1872, Professor Young, who was observing at Sherman in the Rocky Mountains, saw three notable paroxysms in the sun’s chromosphere, jets of luminous matter of intense brilliance being projected at 8h. 45m., 10h. 30m., and 11h. 50m. of the local time. “At dinner,” he says, “the photographer of the party, who was making our magnetic observations, told me, before knowing anything about what I had been observing, that he had been obliged to give up work, his magnet having swung clear off the limb.” Similar phenomena were observed August 5th. Professor Young wrote to England, and received from Greenwich and Stonyhurst copies of the automatic record, which he gives, and which we give in Fig. 52. After allowing for difference of longitude, the reader who will take the pains to compare them may see for himself that both show a jump of the needles in the cellars at Greenwich at the same _minute_ in each of the four cases of outburst in the Rocky Mountains. [Illustration: FIG. 52.--GREENWICH MAGNETIC OBSERVATIONS, AUG. 3 AND 5, 1872.]