CELESTIAL CHEMISTRY. 261 



one who has studied the subject and comprehends the extreme heauty 

 of the adaptations of spcctroscopic apparatus which are employed ; the 

 delicacy and care with which the observations were made, and the caution 

 displayed in drawing conclusions only when the evidence is irrefragable, 

 but must regard the discovery of such an analysis of the true nature of 

 these wonderful bodies as one of the noblest additions to our knowledge 

 which has recently been made. The speculations to which the proved ex- 

 istence of bodies of such enormous size, and consisting apparently of only 

 three or four elementary substances, will give rise, are, doubtless, nu- 

 merous and various in the extreme. It is singular that only one out of 

 several nitrogen lines is seen, but Mr. Huggins has sometimes observed 

 a difference in sharpness between this and some other bright nitrogen 

 lines, which suggests differences in the atoms radiating the light. Again, 

 we find the stars containing numerous elementary bodies ; can it be pos- 

 sible that, in the process of condensation and cooling from the enor- 

 mously high temperature which the nebulae must possess, transmutation 

 of the so-called elements may take place? Modern chemistry savs "No !" 

 but there are occasional indications that some of the so-called elementary 

 bodies may yet be decomposed, or proved to be different forms of others. 

 Time which has done so much will yet bring fresh wonders to light, and 

 the powers of the spectrum analysis will be yet further exerted in the 

 elucidation of the problems of nature. Enough for the present, that the 

 well matured speculations of Herschel, and the mathematical theory of 

 Laplace, have been vindicated from the doubt under which they have been 

 laboring, and the early nebulous condition of cosmical matter so nec- 

 essary for almost all geological reasoning, proved to demonstration by the 

 labors of the observer whose results we have detailed. 



Since the above was written, Mr. Huggins has announced the discovery 

 that the great nebula of Ori<m gives a spectrum indicative of gaseity. This 

 instance, added to those of the Ring and Dumb-Bell Nebuhe, shows that 

 resolution into points of light can no longer be accepted as a proof of a 

 nebula being a cluster of stars. 



THOUGHTS ON THE RESULTS OF SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. 



If the researches through spectral analysis open to us in some de- 

 gree the portals of the infinitely vast, it reconducts us by another 

 route to the idea of unity in nature. In studying the spectrum, we 

 at present recognize each simple body held in suspension in the flame 

 whose rays are decomposed by the glass prism ; but what is a simple 

 body which betrays its presence, not by one bright stripe alone, but 

 by two, three, sometimes by 60 stripes ? In proportion as the spec- 

 trum increases in distinctness, the number of luminous stripes increases 

 for each substance ; shall we ever see them all ? It may well be 

 doubted. Here, then, there is a multiplicity and indeterxninateness 

 which accord but ill, it must be confessed, with the theoretic idea 

 which we entertain of a simple body, a substance not compounded, 

 always identical with itself, substratum of all chemical combinations. 

 Must we admit, with some resolute spirits, that the bodies which we 

 call simple, appear so to us only because thus far we have not suc- 

 ceeded in decomposing them ? Should we conclude that the different 

 simple bodies, if there are really such, are but formed of one and the 

 same matter in different states of condensation ? We thus find our- 



