Of the currents between the earth and the sun, Professor Proctor, in his "Light Science for Leisure Hours," says, "Remembering the influence which the sun has been found to exercise upon the magnetic needle, the question will naturally arise, Has the sun anything to do with magnetic storms? We have clear evidence that he has. On the 1st of September, 1859, Messrs. Carrington and Hodgson were observing the sun, one at Oxford and the other in London. Their scrutiny was directed to certain large spots which at that time marked the sun's face. Suddenly a bright light was seen by each observer to break out on the sun's surface and to travel, slowly in appearance, but in reality at the rate of about seven thousand miles in a minute, across a part of the solar disk. Now, it was found afterwards that the self-registering magnetic instruments at Kew had made at that very instant a strongly-marked jerk. It was learned that at that moment a magnetic storm prevailed in the West Indies, in South America, and in Australia. The signal men in the telegraph stations at Washington and Philadelphia received strong electric shocks; the pen of Bain's telegraph was followed by a flame of fire; and in Norway the telegraphic machinery was set on fire. At night great auroras were seen in both hemispheres. It is impossible not to connect these startling magnetic indications with the remarkable appearance observed upon the sun's disk. But there is other evidence. Magnetic storms prevail more commonly in some years than in others. In those years in which they occur most frequently it is found that the ordinary oscillations of the magnetic needle are more extensive than usual. Now, when these peculiarities had been noticed for many years, it was found that there was an alternate and systematic increase and diminution in intensity of magnetic action, and that the period of the variation was about eleven years. But at the same time a diligent observer had been recording the appearance of the sun's face from day to day and from year to year. He had found that the solar spots are in some years more freely displayed than in others, and he had determined the period in which the spots had successively presented with maximum frequency to be about eleven years. On a comparison of the two sets of observations it was found (and has now been placed beyond a doubt by many years of continual observation) that magnetic perturbations are most energetic when the sun is most spotted, and vice versa. For so remarkable a phenomenon as this none but a cosmical cause can suffice. We can neither say that the spots cause the magnetic storms nor that the magnetic storms cause the spots. We must seek for a cause producing at once both sets of phenomena." It will be observed that the phenomena seen in the sun were marked at the same instant by violent electric perturbations on earth. Hence something must have passed with the velocity of light,