Glasgow Courier. — 1858-06-03 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

REVIEW OF THE BRITISH CORN TRADE.  (From the Hark Lane Express.)  The past week commenced with a good deal of rain, but Saturday was fine, followed by occasional showers, and with a temperature below the wants of the growing corn. On high and dry soils wheat continues to look well ; but on the fens and on cold clays it is partly laid, with some yellow and sickly. Any further rain would diminish the prospects of a crop of corn. Barley and oats have felt the cold nights. Beans and pease, where the hoe has been liberally used, are invariably good ; while grass and the root crops advance rapidly. Some complaints reach us from Northern Europe of excessivemeivture for wheat. In Algeria there was still improvement. Barley-cutting had commenced, and wheat was expected to begin the first week in June ; but the effects of the previous drought make it certain that oats and beans will be failures.  The spots on the sun also led to the discovery of its physical constitution. It was found by ingenious observations that those spots are nothing else than holes through which the body itself of the luminary is caught sight of. The sun, therefore, is composed of two very different materials-- namely, the internal mass, which is a solid body, non-luminous and black; and a superficial envelope, which consists of a light stratum of inflamed substance, whence the star appears to derive its light and heat-giving power. An elastic fluid, elaborated on the dark surface of the san, and floating upwards through the luminous coat, would force it aside temporarily, like the drawing back of a curtain, and so produce the effect of spots. This notion gives two distinct atmospheres to envelope the interior globe of the sun. He reioiceth as a giant to run his eourse—somewhere in the direction of the constellation Hercules—and bedecks himself with light as it were with a garment. The latest observations suggest the belief that the sun has not less than three distinct coats. The opinions of the learned on this curious point have changed completely and rapidly. Towards the close of the last century, one Dr Elliot was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of one Miss Boydell in a fit of jealous rage. His friends defended him, successfully, on the plea of madness ; they brought before the jury certain writings, in which the doctor maintained that the light of the sun came from what he called a dense and universal aurora • in short, an aurora borealis, which entirely surrounded the mass of the sun. He also endeavoured to prove.that the sun, in spite of the torrents of light and heat which it unceasingly pours over the planetary systermmight still itself enjoy so moderate a temperature at its actual surface as to be habitable. A few years latter William Herschell astonished the world by adopting the criminal lunatic's ideas. He declared that the matter which closes the sun to shine is neither a liquid nor an elastic fluid, but a stratum of phosphoric clouds floating in the sun's transparent atmosphere. The lower atmosphere is not luminous, but merely reflects the light of the upper one. A rago, by means of polariscopic expetiments, has furnished what is considered proof that the luminous portion of the sun is of a gaseous nature. Mr Thomas Woods deduces, from photographic results, the probability that the nature or the sun is analogous to that of flame, since their results are identical. Each solar atmosphere, separated by a certain interval, is endowed with independent movements. The thickness of the atmospheres is estimated at b,tween 2,000 and 3,000 miles. Modern science, which has swept the inhabitants of the moon into nothingness by the ever-increasing assurance that the moon has no respirable atmosphere, has given almost official authority to the fact that organised beings dwell on the surface of the sun, and exist unscorchod by hisardent rays.—Dickens's Household Words.  A very melancholy event happened at North Uhl% 16th May. As two young men, named Angus Mac. leod and Angus Macphail) both residing at Middle Quarter, North Uist, were standing together during a thunder storm, they were struck by lightning, and instantaneously deprived of life.—lnverness Courier.