THEORIES OF SOLAR HEAT. 43 



resulting product by combustion of nine fold of 

 water. This would finally cover the surface of 

 the sun with a fire-extinguishing ocean, like three 

 fourths of our globe covered by seas. Were the 

 globe of the sun composed of carbon or coal, and 

 surrounded by an atmosphere of oxygen, the com- 

 bustion would be terminated by absorbing three- 

 fold its weight of oxygen, and producing a fire- 

 extinguishing atmosphere of carbonic acid gas ; the 

 presence of which, unless there are forest leaves 

 on the sun as on our earth to absorb it, would, 

 when increased to only one fifth of the solar at- 

 mosphere, finally extinguish combustion, if that 

 atmosphere is like ours. 



In the modern invention of fire-extinguishers, 

 carbonic acid gas in portable cylinders is em- 

 ployed as the most effective check to confla- 

 grations. 



An astronomer has calculated that to sustain 

 for a few thousand years the intensity of solar 

 light and heat, would require a quantity of solid 

 coal as great as the bulk of the earth. 



As the compression of air and other substances 

 develops heat, some theorists, have suggested this 

 cause, but without proposing any mode of com- 

 pressing the solar atmosphere. 



In the " Reported Observations " of the total 

 eclipse of the sun in 1878, President Morton 

 affirms, that " evidences tend to sustain the the- 

 ory that the sun's heat is maintained by the im- 



