THE SUN: ITS CHEMICAL ANALYSIS, 



ACCORDING TO 



THE RECENT DISCOVERIES OF M.M. KIRCHOFF AND BUNSEN- 



BY AUGUSTE LAUGEL. 



TRANSLATED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FROM THE " REVDE DES DEUX MONDES, PARI3, 



JANUARY 15, 1862. 



Science has just succeeded in transcending one of those intervals 

 which scarcely the most daring cosmogony or unbridled fancy had 

 ventured to traverse. Astronomy had weighed and measured the 

 sun; chemistry, aided by physics, to-day makes an analysis of it. It 

 says to us, "The solar atmosphere comprises, in the state of vapor, a 

 great number of the substances which compose our planet, iron, the 

 metals which enter into the composition of our alkalies and earth, 

 potassium, sodium, strontium, calcium, barium; it contains chrome, 

 nickel, copper, and zinc; on the other hand, neither gold, nor silver, 

 nor mercury, nor aluminum, nor tin, nor lead, nor antimony, nor 

 arsenic, nor silicium, at least in notable quantities, are to be found 

 in it. Among the metals at once telluric and solar are to be included 

 coeskim and rubidium, metals yesterday unknown, which had escaped 

 all the processes of ordinary chemical analysis." These affirmations 

 of science are so surprising that we might be tempted at first to con- 

 sign them, without examination, to the reveries of a Swift, a moralist 

 turned chemist, or the imaginings of some new Micromegas; but the 

 labors of M.M. Kirchofif and Bunsen present not the slightest trace 

 of extravagance. We have here no romance, more or less ingenious, 

 where the plurality of habitable worlds is discussed, where hypotheses 

 are unceremoniously mingled with facts, cosmic mysteries with the 

 realities of the sublunary world. The discoveries of the two German 

 savans are founded on the most rigorous observations, and deserve 

 to be classed among the most admirable acquisitions of the positive 

 sciences. Their method, at the same time that it has to some extent 

 given the means of exploring the sun from a distance, has lurnished 

 to chemical analysis a process of investigation of an unheard of, 

 almost miraculous, delicacy. We may boldly aiBrm that by this 

 method mineralogy may be revived and renovated, that chemistry 

 will enlarge its domain and be able to master problems heretofore 

 irresolvable. Meanwhile the capital result of these admirable re- 

 searches — the one which most interests the philosophy of nature — is 

 already attained : the identity of the materials which compose the 

 sun and the earth has been demonstrated. The chemical unity of our 

 planetary system has been placed beyond dispute. 



This is not a discovery to which we can be indifferent. Man had long 



