TEMPORARY STARS. 



155 



transition of the cosmical vapor into clusters of stars, of an 

 agglomerative force, of a concentration to a central nucleus, 

 and of hypotheses of a gradual formation of solid bodies out 

 of a vaporous fluid views which were generally received in 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century, but which at pres- 

 ent, owing to the ever-changing fluctuations in the world of 

 thought, are in many respects exposed to new doubts. 



Among newly-appeared temporary stars, the following 

 (though with variable degrees of certainty) may be reckoned. 

 I have arranged them according to the order in which they 

 respectively appeared. 



EXPLANATORY REMARKS. 



(<z) This star first appeared in July, 134 years before our era. We 

 have taken it from the Chinese Records of Ma-tuan-lin, for the transla- 

 tion of which we are indebted to the learned linguist Edward Biot 

 ( Connaistance des Temps pour Van 1846, p. 6 1). Its place was between 

 P and p of Scorpio. Among the extraordinary foreign-looking stars of 

 these records, called also guest-stars (etoiles hdtes, " Ke-sing," strangers 

 of a singular aspect), which are distinguished by the observers from 

 comets with tails, fixed new stars and advancing tailless comets are cer- 

 tainly sometimes mixed up. But in the record of their motion (Ke-sing 



tails of comets (the vapory radiation from their nuclei) with the galaxy 

 to which I have already alluded. (Cotmos, vol. i., p. 103.) 



