subject to the same mysterious influence which causes the northern banners to wave respondently over the starlit depths of heaven. Nay, it is even probable that every flicker and coruscation of our auroral displays correspond with similar manifestations upon every planet which travels round the sun." In Professor Ball's late work, "In the High Heavens," the author says, "Dr. Schuster suggests that there may be an electric connection between the sun and the planets. In fact, with some limitations, we might even assert that there must be such a connection. It is well known that great outbreaks on the sun have been immediately followed, I might almost say accompanied, by remarkable magnetic disturbances on the earth. The instances that are recorded of this connection are altogether too remarkable to be set aside as mere coincidences. Dr. Huggins has not referred in this connection to Hertz's astonishing discoveries; but it seems quite possible that research along this line may throw light on the subject, at present so obscure, of the electric relation between the sun and the earth." Of this common electrical relationship between our sun and the different planets, and of these with each other, Professor Proctor says, in his article, "Terrestrial Magnetism," "Interesting as are the bonds of union which Copernicus and Kepler and Newton have traced in the relations of our system, it would seem as though we were approaching the traces of a yet more wonderful law of association. We see the earth's magnetism responding to the solar influences, not merely in those rhythmic motions which belong to the periodic variations, but in sudden thrills affecting the whole framework of our globe. The magnetic storms which are called into action by such solar disturbances as the one of September, 1859, are, we may feel sure, not peculiar to our own earth. The other planets feel the same influence,--not, perhaps, in exactly the same way, but according to the constitution and physical habitudes which respectively belong to them. So that one can scarce conceive a subject of study at once more promising and more interesting." Of these prophetic shadows which science often seems to cast before, Professor Nichol, in his "Architecture of the Heavens" (referring to Sir William Herschel), says, "Without difficulty or pretence he there casts aside an idea which had not been questioned before, unless in a few of those obscure, indefinite speculations which, strangely enough, often prelude important discoveries." These facts are thus incontestably established: that electric currents of enormous energy and vast quantity are constantly passing without appreciable resistance and with the speed of light between the earth and the sun; that such currents cannot be conducted through vacua, or through dry gases, or through a dense medium; and that, whatever other matter may exist in the intervening space, such space is pervaded throughout by an attenuated vapor of such constitution