338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and all rnake up a picture suggestive rather of the Inferno * or 

 the wars of thunderbolt and tempest than an exemplification of 

 the most important of the arts of peace. 



[ To be continued.] 



STAR-STREAMS AND NEBULAE. 



By GAEKETT P. SERVISS. 



IT is wonderful what a mass of evidence confirmatory of the 

 nebular hypothesis in its broadest sense has been accumu- 

 lated within the past few years. Most of this new testimony in 

 favor of an old theory has been furnished by Astronomical Pho- 

 tography, that giant that sees the invisible, which has recently 

 risen to the aid of astronomers with the startling suddenness and 

 unexpectedness of the Arab fisherman's afrite escaping from the 

 despised bottle. Perhaps the most notable of these celestial pho- 

 tographs, in the direct light that it throws upon the nebular 

 hypothesis, is Mr. Roberts's already famous picture of the An- 

 dromeda nebula. Nobody can look upon the vast nebulous spirals 

 that this photograph reveals, surrounding a great central con- 

 densation, and showing here and there a brighter knot where a 

 satellite of the huge focal mass is in process of formation, with- 

 out feeling that Laplace and Kant were not very far astray in 

 their guess as to the mode of formation of the solar system. 



But, although stars in abundance are scattered over and around 

 the Andromeda nebula, there is little in their appearance to sug- 

 gest a connection between them and the nebula. It is different 

 with the nebulae in the Pleiades and in Orion. In the wonderful 

 photographs of the Pleiades by the Henry brothers of Paris one 

 not only sees masses of nebulous matter clinging, so to speak, 

 to some of the more conspicuous stars, but in one place a long, 

 straight, narrow strip of nebula has stars dotted along its whole 

 length, like diamonds strung upon a ribbon. It becomes more 

 difficult to resist the conclusion that in this strange nebulous 

 streak, with its starry file, we possess an indication of the mode 



* I am reminded of a stalwart iron-master who formerly owned a forge in New England, 

 and whose ideas of futurity, apparently, were not perfectly definite at any rate, he was 

 disposed to be somewhat inquisitive in his way in regard thereto. Whenever he could 

 tempt a clergyman to visit his forge, he would place him immediately in front of the largest 

 furnace, and, as the attendant on a signal raised the door, revealing a temperature within 

 that Nebuchadnezzar's furnace could not have surpassed, he would howl in the ear of the 

 scorched and thoroughly frightened preacher the inquiry, "Is iiell any hotter than that?" 

 It has not been recorded that he ever obtained any positive information in answer to this 

 question, the circumstances of which doubtless afforded food for thought to the parties to 

 whom it was put. 



