This law, called after SPÖRER, its discoverer, indicates that the origin and source of sunspot activity lie within the Sun. At one time it was thought that sunspots were due to some action of Jupiter--for Jupiter moves round the Sun in 11.8 years, a period not very different from the sunspot cycle--or to some meteoric stream. But Spörer's Law could not be imposed by some influence from without. Still sunspots, once formed, may be influenced by the Earth, and perhaps by other {72} planets also, for MRS. WALTER MAUNDER has shown that the numbers and areas of spots tend to be smaller on the western half of the disc, as seen from the Earth, than on the eastern, while considerably more groups come into view at the east edge of the Sun than pass out of view at the west edge, so that it would appear as if the Earth had a damping effect upon the spots exposed to it. But the Sun is far greater than it ordinarily appears to us. Twice every year, and sometimes oftener, the Moon, when new, comes between the Earth and the Sun, and we have an +Eclipse of the Sun+, the dark body of the Moon hiding part, or all, of the greater light. The Sun and Moon are so nearly of the same apparent size that an eclipse of the Sun is total only for a very narrow belt of the Earth's surface, and, as the Moon moves more quickly than the Sun, the eclipse only remains total for a very short time--seven minutes at the outside, more usually only two or three. North or south of that belt the Moon is projected, so as to leave uncovered a part of the Sun north or south of the Moon. A total eclipse, therefore, is rare at any particular place, and if a man were able to put himself in the best possible position on each occasion, it would cost him thirty years to secure an hour's accumulated duration. Eclipses of the Moon are visible over half the world at one time, for there is a real loss to the Moon of her light. Her eclipses are brought about when, in her orbit, she passes behind the Earth, and the Earth, being between the Sun and the Moon, cuts off from the latter most of the light falling upon her; not quite all; a small portion reaches her after passing through the thickest part of the Earth's atmosphere, so that the {73} Moon in an eclipse looks a deep copper colour, much as she does when rising on a foggy evening. Total eclipses of the Sun have well repaid all the efforts made to observe them. It is a wonderful sight to watch the blackness of darkness slowly creeping over the very fountain of light until it is wholly and entirely hidden; to watch the colours fade away from the landscape and a deathlike, leaden hue pervade all nature, and then to see a silvery, star-like halo, flecked with bright little rose-coloured flames, flash out round the black disc that has taken the place of the Sun.