t
that passes into the eyepiece.

Furnished with an apparatus of this description we can employ either a
three-, four-, or five-inch glass upon the sun with much satisfaction.
For the amateur's purposes the sun is only specially interesting when it
is spotted. The first years of the twentieth century will behold a
gradual growth in the number and size of the solar spots as those years
happen to coincide with the increasing phase of the sun-spot period.
Large sun spots and groups of spots often present an immense amount of
detail which tasks the skill of the draughtsman to represent it. But a
little practice will enable one to produce very good representations of
sun spots, as well as of the whitish patches called faculae by which they
are frequently surrounded.

For the simple purpose of exhibiting the spotted face of the sun without
much magnifying power, a telescope may be used to project the solar
image on a white sheet or screen. If the experiment is tried in a room,
a little ingenuity will enable the observer to arrange a curtain
covering the window used, in such a way as to exclude all the light
except that which comes through the telescope. Then, by placing a sheet
of paper or a drawing board before the eyepiece and focusing the image
of the sun upon it, very good results may be obtained.

If one has a permanent mounting and a driving clock, a small
spectroscope may be attached, for solar observations, even to a
telescope of only four or five inches aperture, and with its aid most
interesting views may be obtained of the wonderful red hydrogen flames
that frequently appear at the edge of the solar disk.

CHAPTER X

ARE THERE PLANETS AMONG THE STARS?

"... And if there should be
Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited
By greater things, and they themselves far more
In number than the dust of thy dull earth,
What wouldst thou think?"--BYRON'S CAIN.

This always interesting question has lately been revived in a startling
manner by discoveries that have seemed to reach almost deep enough to
touch its solution. The following sentences, from the pen of Dr. T. J.
J. See, of the Lowell Observatory, are very significant from this point
of view:

"Our observations during 1896-'97 have certainly disclosed stars more
difficult than any which astronomers had seen before. Among these
obscure objects about half a dozen are truly wonderful, in that they
seem to be dark, almost black in color,