598 Original Articles. [Oct., 
the presence of nickel, and that calcium, magnesium, barium, copper, 
zinc, all well-known substances, are suspended in the atmosphere of 
our luminary. By a similar process, sodium, magnesium, hydrogen, 
calcium, iron, bismuth, tellurium, antimony, and mercury, have been 
found in Aldebaran, and other elements in other stars. 
We have thus arrived at the wonderful result that many of these 
substances with which we are most familiar occur also in the sun and 
stars, and the great law which has led us to this conclusion may be 
stated thus :—a body absorbs those very rays which it gives out when 
heated. Let us now see if we have not a similar law in other branches 
of science. When a musical note is sounded in the presence of a string 
which would give out the same note, the string catches up or absorbs 
the musical note in order to give it out on its own account. We may 
place the two laws side by side in the following manner. 
A body when cold absorbs the ray which it emits when heated. 
A string when at rest catches up the note which it gives out when 
struck. Nor perhaps are we without an indication that the same 
law holds in medicine. Similia similibus curantur (like cures like) is 
the doctrine of a certain school; but we leave homceopathists to follow 
out the analogy here suggested. 
We have offered these observations in order to show our readers 
that the law which we have endeavoured to place before them is one 
whose foundation lies very deep in the present system of things: and 
the result that Kirchhoff has deduced from this law is one altogether 
worthy of its greatness ; a result bringing vividly before us the one- 
ness of the universe, inasmuch as it discloses the prevalence throughout 
the solar and stellar systems of those very forms and species of matter 
with which we are here familiar. No fact hitherto discovered so 
much exhibits the unity of creation—none more the unity of the 
Creator ; and thus the last great achievement of science becomes as it 
were a comment on the first page of Sacred History, in which we are 
told that “ He made the stars also.” 
ON THE SOURCE OF LIVING ORGANISMS. 
By James Samvuetson, Editor. 
TuereE are two subjects in Natural History which, more than any 
other, attract the attention of modern biologists, —the Origin of 
Species, and the Source from which the lowest known Forms of Life 
are derived; in other words (reversing the order of subjects), the 
Beginning of Life, and its Continuance. ; 
To those persons who have followed the discussions relative to 
these two inquiries, it is quite obvious why they should simultaneously 
occupy the attention of the scientific world, for it has with truth been 
observed, that an earnest advocate of the Darwinian theory, one who 
teaches that every living form is and has been the result of a modifi- 
