ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY. 169 



appear, that nature is wont to make her way from one 

 locality to another, now by steps, anon abruptly by leaps, 

 and then reverses the progression. Otherwise, if any one 

 really looks into the case, there could be no structure, no 

 organized figure, did nature always proceed by impercep 

 tible degrees. Wherefore this process by gradations may 

 be fitly placed in the intervals between worlds, but not in 

 a world, to the organization of which it is required that 

 things much dissimilar should be severed the one from the 

 other, and yet brought into close contiguity. Thus it is 

 that the air embraces and is in contact with the earth and 

 waters, a body widely different, and yet placed in proxi 

 mity, not in the order of, first, earth, then vapour or fog, 

 then pure air, but air at once without an intermediate body. 

 And in the air and ether two substances we usually join 

 with one another, the most conspicuous and thorough di 

 versity of all may be observed, from their quality being- 

 more or less susceptible of a starry nature. There appeal- 

 therefore to be three regions most distinctly lying between 

 the earth and the highest point of heaven: that is, the 

 region of the air, the region of the planetary heaven, and 

 the region of the starry heaven. Now in the lowest region 

 the substance of the stars is not found, it exists in the 

 middle in the form of conglobation into certain orbs, but in 

 the highest heaven it is dispersed into numberless globes, 

 so that in its highest region it seems to migrate, as it were, 

 into the pure ernpyreum. Meantime, that must not be for 

 gotten, which we mentioned a little before, that nature is 

 accustomed to alternate fine gradations and distinct tran 

 sits in her processes, so that the confines of the first com 

 municate with the second, and of the second with the third. 

 For in the upper air, after the air has begun to be purified 

 from the effluvia of the earth, and refined by the vici 

 nity of the heavenly bodies, flame searches out its way 

 and struggles into form ; as we see in the lower kind of 

 comets, which are of an intermediate nature between the 

 steady and an evanescent sidereal nature. And again, the 

 part of heaven near the sun appears to grow stellescent, 

 and to pass into a starry essence. For those maculae 

 which are discoverable, by a faithful and careful observa 

 tion of the sun, are a sort of germ or rudiments of starry 

 matter; and in the heaven about Jupiter there are also 

 visible complete and perfect stars, though, from their mi 

 nuteness, invisible without the help of telescopes. And 

 again, in the upper parts of the starry heaven, from num- 



