CHEMISTRY OF THE ROCKS. 67 



might we conjecture that hydrogen is a more recent production 

 than the worlds themselves? It has been observed time and 

 again to burst up from the nethermost regions of the sun with 

 inconceivable force, as if it were the pent-up product of a volca- 

 no, and to throw up columns of its flaming gas, in one case 

 200,000 miles high. And these great outbursts of hydrogen are 

 always the precursors of the dark sunken spots in the photo- 

 sphere. How came this almost imponderable ether to be impris- 

 oned in the deep craters of the sun, if it is not a product that is 

 constantly forming in the solar caldron? 



But it is easier to ask questions than to answer them. And I 

 will close, in the fear of having already been thought too free 

 with the scientific imagination. 



