ANTICIPATIONS OF COMING WOES.

Patea Mail, Volume V, Issue 504, 31 March 1880, Page 2

ANTICIPATIONS OF COMING WOES.

A number of astronomers engaged in observing the sun during the late eclipse agree that its condition appears to haye undergone a great change, and Professor Lockyer inclines to the opinion that the changes must have a very serious result. Observers were surpris -d to find that the burning hydrogen which was formerly present in the curc.na has largely disappeared. The spectroscope proves this beyond the •possibility of doubt. It had been previously known that for the last four years the spots which were formerly so frequent on the .sun have been fewer, and the close connection between the sun’s spots and terrestrial magnetism has been once more demonstrated by the marked decreas of magnetic activity dunng'thc same period. The disappearance of sun-spots and the disappea ance of hydrogen from the corona means that solar activity and solar heat have decreased. Now, tin* decrease of solar heat means in its earlier stage an increase of heat on the earth, for gases thrown out by the sun when in a stale of activity, and which act as a shield to protect the earth, disappear as the heat decreases. According to this view, the sun is taking precisely the course which must end in the burning up of the earth at a comparatively early period. But the heavens are said by some well-informed persons to indicate, on much more proximate evidence* that wo are rapidly approaching what will be one of the most prrilous and mal'fic periods of the earth’s history. Since the commencement of the Christian era, the perihelia of the four great planets of the solar system— Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, and Nepiuuo—have not been coincidental. But this is about to occur, and, in the language of Knapp, who has turned the history of the greatest epidemics that ever afflicted the tinman race to the perihelia of tln-se planets, there will soon be times of great pestilence. The view is that when one or more of the huge planets is nearest to the sun the temperature and condition of onr atmosphere are so disturbed as to cause injurious v’cissitudes, terrific rains, prolonged droughts, &c., resulting in the destruction ol crops, and pestilence among human beings and dmuesdc animals. Dr Knapp has collected a mass of statistical data, all going to show that perihelion dales have always been marked by unusual mortality, and that sickness and death have invariably corresponded with the planets in perihelion years at the same time. The revolution of Jupiter round the snu is accomplished in a little less than twelve years; of Saturn, in a little less than thirty years; and of Uranus, in about eightyfour years. If it he true, therefore, that the perihelia of these planets occasion atmospheric conditions unfavorable to life, pestilential periods should occur once in a dozen years, and still more widespread epidemics at longer intervals. In tracing the history of epidemics for more than 1,900 years, Dr Knapp finds the fact in all cases to validate the theory. Tims, in the sixth, and again in the sixteenth centuries, three of these planets were coincident in perihelion, and those were the must pestilential times of the Christian era. But soon after 1860, for

the first time in 2,000 years, all four of tb se planets will be at their nearest approach to the sun or perihelion. So that for a few years—say from 1880 to 1885 —vitality of every living thing will bo put to a severe and trying ordeal. Some persons think they see in the signs of the times evidence of the great disasters at hand in the immediate future. Extremes of heat and cold, tiie prevalence of flood and disasters, the general failure of the potato crop, the widespread child fever among human beings, and the equal presence of the epizootic among animats are mentioned as among the premonitions of the rapidly-approaching petiheiion. That the conjoint perihelion of all the large planets of the solar system —one of which, Jupiter, is a thousand times as large as the earth—must turb onr atmosphere and very considerably, is probable—that this disturbance must be injurious to health and life is certain—and that- these periods have heretofore been pestilential is a matter of record. —Medical Review.