nd he
has for years been recognized as the leader. But he is no mere observer;
he is a generalizer as well; and he long since evolved revolutionary
ideas as to the origin of the sidereal and solar systems.

For a man whose chief occupation is the study of the sun and stars,
smoky, foggy, cloudy London may seem a strange location. I asked
Professor Lockyer about this, and his reply was most characteristic.
"The fact is," he said, "the weather here is too fine from one point of
view: my working staff is so small, and the number of working nights so
large, that most of the time there is no one about to do anything during
the day. Then, another thing, here at South Kensington I am in touch
with my colleagues in the other departments--physics, chemistry, and so
forth--and can at once draw upon their special knowledge for aid on any
obscure point in their lines that may crop up. If we were out in the
country this would not be so. You see, then, that it is a choice between
weather and brains. I prefer the brains."

Professor Lockyer went on to state, however, that he is by no means
altogether dependent upon the observations made at South Kensington. For
certain purposes the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is in requisition,
and there are three observatories at different places in India at which
photographs of the sun-spots and solar spectra are taken regularly.
From these combined sources photographs of the sun are forthcoming
practically every day of the year; to be accurate, on three hundred and
sixty days out of the three hundred and sixty-five. It was far
otherwise when Professor Lockyer first began his studies of the sun, as
observations were then made and recorded on only about one-third of the
days in each year.

Exteriorly the observatory at South Kensington is not at all such a
place as one might expect to find. It is, in Professor Lockyer's own
words, "little more than a collection of sheds," but within these
alleged sheds may be found an excellent equipment of telescopes, both
refracting and reflecting, and of all other things requisite to the
peculiar study which forms the subject of special research here.

I have had occasion again and again to call attention to this relatively
meagre equipment of the European institutions, but in no case, perhaps,
is the contrast more striking between the exterior appearance of a
famous scientific institution and the work that is being accomplished
within it than is shown in t