rnt: SUN A.VD SUNLIGHT. 71 



bo, as Sir -Mm Ilersrhell says : " An enormous waste or what 

 appears ID l>o waste." 



" Take all the planets together, great and small, tin- light and 

 heat they receive, is only one 227 milliuncth part, of the 

 whole quantity thrown out by the sun. All the rest escapes 

 into free space and is lost among the stars, or does there some 

 other work that we know nothing about." 



This very fact should have told Herschell the theory was a 

 bad one ; for as there is nothing more perfect than nature, iu all 

 its inherent principles or laws ; so it is not in accordance with 

 any of God's works, that such a furnace should be poised in the 

 heavens to light and heat a few planets, when it could equally 

 perform the same service to a million of them. 



But there is another strong objection. Herschell says the 

 temperature of empty space is no less than 230 F. Thermo- 

 meter below zero." If the sun is a furnace, then according to all 

 rules of furnaces, the heat must l>e all wasted or absorbed by 

 this cold region of space. Or, if it is really the heat of the 

 furnace, which we feel on a summer's day, then the " empty " 

 space must be hotter still, for the nearer we approach a furnace, 

 the hotter the temperature becomes. But the reverse in this 

 case is the reality, for the higher we rise from the earth, the 

 colder it becomes, and the mountain tops are covered with ice 

 and snow, all the year round. 



\\"e must, therefore, give up the supposition that the sun is a 

 furnace, and seek for an explanation of the light, and heat, 

 which we receive from it, in the theory of atomagnetic action. 

 In giving a theory of the sun, we are obliged to lay down a 

 theory of the universe, which, it is unnecessary to say, differs 

 from that accepted by astronom- 



