with it seem to form a region of the stellar universe where fashioning processes are still at work." In just such regions of potential energy should we look for such currents in space, as, on our own earth, the Gulf Stream and the trade-winds, as well as cyclones and other atmospheric movements, find their origin under precisely parallel circumstances,--to wit, the outpour upon and direct precipitation of increased quantities of heat at the tropics or other local centers of such development. The effects of such an increase of quantity and potential in an electrical current are clearly illustrated in the device previously referred to, in which electrolytic decomposition was effected in a pail of water; we find it also in the burning out of the brushes and commutators in dynamo-electric machines and in telegraphic apparatus during thunder-storms and the like. Allowing a solar system a drift through space only equal to that of our own, which has a relatively slow movement, it would traverse such a "Gulf Stream" of space seven hundred thousand miles wide in a single day. But it may not even have passed through; it may merely have grazed the margin of such a current; for the motions of solar systems are not controlled by the same forces as those upon which their electrical energies depend. Professor Ball, in his chapter on the great heat-wave of 1892, says, "Towards the end of July an extraordinarily high temperature, even for that period of the year, prevailed over a very large part of the North American continent. The so-called heat-wave then seems to have travelled eastward and crossed the Atlantic Ocean; ... a fortnight after the occurrence of unusually great heat in the New World there was a similar experience in the Old World.... This discussion will at all events enable us to make some reply to the question which has often been asked, as to what was the cause of the great heat-wave.... It is, however, quite possible that certain changes in progress on the sun may act in a specific manner on our climate.... It cannot be denied that local, if not general, changes in the sun's temperature must be the accompaniment of the violent disturbances by which our luminary is now and then agitated. It is, indeed, well known that there are occasional outbreaks of solar activity, and that these recur in a periodic manner; it is accordingly not without interest to notice that the present year has been one of the periods of this activity. We are certainly not going so far as to say that any connection has been definitely established between a season of exuberant sun-spots and a season remarkable for excessive warmth; but, as we know that there is a connection between the magnetic condition of the earth and the state of solar activity, it is by no means impossible that climate and sun-spots may also stand in some relationship to each other." These local deviations are doubtless due to planetary positions