Conservation Of Solar Energy

l)r. C. W. .Siemens, whose nam has of late been elosely conrected with electrical devolopments, read a paper the other day before the London Boyal Society on the conservation of solar energy, in which novel veiws were propounded. Accordiag to Pouillet and other experimenters, the heat radiated from t'ie sun is equiavlent to that which wouk! be produced by the combustión every thirty-six hours of a mass of coal as great as the earth. Of' this vast amount of radiant heat only the 225-millionth part is intercepted by the planeta, the rest passes into space aud appears to be absolutely wasted. iïotwi'listandiug the ereormous loss of heat, the sun,s temperaturejhas not diminished sensibly for centuries. How is this heat kept up? One theory is that the sun is fed with a steady stream of metors. Anothef is that the heat is nustained by solar contraction - that the sun feeds upon itself and will in time be burnt out. Dr. Siemens is dissatisüed with both these hypotheses, and propounds a new one. Ile assumes that interplanetary and interstellar space is filled with gases,- hydrogen, oxygen and compound of carbon Owing to the high rotive veloctty of the equatorial regions of the sun, that body acts upon the gases surrounding it very much like a huge fan, drawing them in at the poles and throwing out the producís of combustión like a huge wave at the equator. The indraught of gases at the poles take'flre as they reach the photosphere and produce intense heat and light as they spread ov9r the aurface on their way to the sun's equator. The products of combustión, chiefly aqueous vapor and carbon compounds, are dnven into thej interplanetary space.where, in a highly rarifled state, they are dissociated by the action of radiant heat. and are ready to be again drawn into the sun. On this hypothesis tht re is no waste of solar energy, and no danger of the diminution and final extinction of the sun's light and heat. Moreover, Dr. Siemens maintains, his hypohthesis explains that mysterious appearance, thefzodiacal light, as welljas these puzzling bodie s, the comets. Dr. Sic Mens thus sums up the fundamental conditions of his theory: 1. That aqueous vapor and carbon compouds are present in Btellar or interplanetary space. 2. That these gaseous compounds are capable of being dissociated by radiant solar energy while in a state of extreme atteuuation. 8. That these dissociated va pors are capable of being compressed into the solar photosphere by a process of interchange with an equal amount of reasociated vapora, this interchange being effected by the centrif ugal action of the sun itself. If these conditions, he adds, could be substantiated, we sliould gain the sstisfaction that our solar system would no longer iupreas us with the idea of prodigious waste through dissipation of .energy into space, but rather with that of wellordered self-sustalning action, capable of perpetuating iolar radiation to the reaiotest future. The man who was waiting for something to turn up was rewarded when he stepped on the edge of a barrelhoop. The caniages or cars for the metropolitan raihoad system of Naples are 1 to be built on the American plan.