John Frederick William Herschel to Faraday   10 November 1852

Harley Street | Nov. 10 1852

My dear Faraday

Wolf’s letter¹ excites great expectations². A law of perioding in the recurrence of the Solar Spots seems to be established by Schwabe’s³ (?) observations referred to by Sabine in his recent paper on Magnetic disturbances⁴, and the period (of somewhere about 10 or 11 years if I remember right) agrees with Wolff.- Sabine has in that paper (whether originally or not I know not) distinctly connected the two Phaenomena - extraordinary Magnetic disturbances and great Solar Spots. - their identity of period.- If all this be not premature we stand on the verge of a vast cosmical discovery such as nothing hitherto imagined can compare with. Confer what I have said about the exciting cause of the Solar light - referring it to Cosmical electric currents traversing space and finding in the upper regions of the Suns atmosphere matter in a fit state of tenuity to be auroralized by them (Astron. Note on Aur. 400)⁵[.]

(Query the red Clouds seen in Solar Eclipses - are they not reposing auroral masses)[.]

As Sabines paper was read to the R.S. and the subject is one of quite as much physical as purely astronomical Interest I should think the RS would be the fit point of delivery of Mr Wolfe’s ideas - only in what form I know not - perhaps in some conversational form - or in that of a statement from the chair (but ? as this would be a precedent⁶).

However I would not preclude the Astronomical Society from learning and discussing it and I don’t see why it might not pass on from one to the other in the way of Scientific News or Gossip[.]

Yours very sincerely | J.F.W. Herschel

Dr Faraday

PS. What treatise on Chemistry (not organic) should I put into my Son’s⁷ library as a text book in furnishing him with matter for meditation in India?