Also another curious sight is often seen, in a telescope. Countless little long narrow objects, something like willow leaves or grains of rice, seem to lie scattered closely over the sun. They are either side by side or crossing one another. Look at the picture of the sun-spot, and you will see the “willow leaves” there. Perhaps they are shining sun-clouds. Awful storms are common on the Sun, and terrific outbreaks are often taking place. Wild rushes of blazing gases can be seen, even from this great distance. The black spots are most likely caused by vast whirlwinds tearing open the Sun’s bright envelope of clouds; and the white spots may be another kind of tornado. Doubtless the crimson fire-mountains are also some sort of storm. They come and go, change and disappear, in a longer or a shorter time. Fifty thousand miles of height is common for one of them, and a hundred thousand miles is not unusual, and often they are still more. Our very highest mountain on the Earth is only about seven miles high. Think what a difference! But you must not picture to yourself solid mountains of rock on the Sun. All rock there is not melted only, but turned to gases, by the tremendous heat. These crimson heights are of gases, glowing and brilliant. It is pretty safe to say of the Sun, as of the Moon, that people such as we are could not possibly live there. If the Moon is too cold, the Sun is infinitely too hot. If the Moon has no air, the Sun has certainly none of the right kind for men and animals to breathe. Besides, how could they exist on a globe of fiery gases? We know pretty well what the burning power of the Sun is, even here, on a hot summer’s day, as he shines out of a cloudless sky. But this is ninety-two millions of miles off! Imagine what the desperate heat and glare must be at a distance of only a few thousand miles; not to speak of close to the Sun! If our Earth were to journey to a place in the sky as far away from the Sun as our Moon is now from us, one of those fiery mountain-tongues of crimson gas might leap out and wrap itself round the whole Earth. But long before she could get so near she would have become a tomb of death--scorched, and dried up, and withered. The seas would all have turned into hot steam, and not a blade of grass would be left. Yet, although, if we could venture near, we should be destroyed, on the other hand we owe much to the Sun. Did you ever think what a dark and cold and lifeless globe our Earth would be without him? All our light, except a few star-glimmers, comes from the Sun. Even moonlight is really reflected sunlight. Almost all our heat comes from him. Once upon a time the Earth was hot and glowing, and some heat still remains deep underground even now. But this heat could do little for us if the Sun were absent. You know how icy-cold the ground becomes in winter. Still, you may say, we have fires to warm us, and lamps and candles to give us light.