ii8 CLASSICS OF MODERN SCIENCE 

 be required to shine like a star of the eighth magnitude, at a distance 

 sufficiently great to cause a vast system of stars to put on the ap- 

 pearance of a very diluted milky nebulosity. 



But what a field of novelty is here opened to our conceptions ! A 

 shining fluid, of a brightness sufficient to reach us from the remote 

 regions of a star of the 8th, 9th, loth, or 12th magnitude, and of an 

 extent so considerable as to take up 3, 4, 5, or 6 minutes in diameter ! 

 Can we compare it to the coruscation of the electric fluid in the aurora 

 borealis ? Or to the more magnificent cone of the zodiacal light as we 

 see it in the spring or autumn? The latter, notwithstanding Dr. H. 

 has observed it to reach at least 90° from the sun, is yet of so little 

 extent and brightness, as probably not to be perceived even by the 

 inhabitants of Saturn or the Georgian planet, and must be utterly 

 invisible at the remoteness of the nearest fixed star. 



More extensive views may be derived from this proof of the exist- 

 ence of a shining matter. Perhaps it has been too hastily surmised 

 that all milky nebulosity, of which there is so much in the heavens, is 

 owing to starlight only. These nebulous stars may serve as a clue to 

 unravel other mysterious phenomena. If the shining fluid that sur- 

 rounds them is not so essentially connected with these nebulous stars, 

 but that it can also exist without them, which seems to be sufficiently 

 probable, and will be examined hereafter, we may with great facility 

 explain that very extensive, telescopic nebulosity, which, as before 

 mentioned, is expanded over more than 60° of the heavens, about 

 the constellation of Orion ; a luminous matter accounting much better 

 for it than clustering stars at a distance. In this case we may also 

 pretty nearly guess at its situation, which must commence somewhere 

 about the range of the stars of the 7th magnitude, or a little farther 

 from us, and extend unequally in some places perhaps to the regions 

 of those of the 9th, loth, nth, and 12th. The foundation for this 

 surmise is, that not unlikely some of the stars that happen to be 

 situated in a more condensed part of it, or that perhaps by their own 

 attraction draw together some quantity of this fluid greater than what 

 they are entitled to by their situation in it, will, of course, assume the 

 appearance of cloudy stars; and many of those named are either in 

 this stratum of luminous matter, or very near it. 



It has been said above, that in nebulous stars the existence of the 

 shining fluid does not seem to be so essentially connected with the 



