38 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



planets by supposing another kind of motion still more 

 incomprehensible. 



Explanations which are more difficult to explain than 

 the phenomena they propose to elucidate only obscure the 

 light of true science, and stand as impedimente to the pro- 

 gress of sound philosophy. 



DR. SIEMENS' THEORY OF THE SUN. 



A PAPER was read on March 2, 1882, by Dr. 0. W. Sie- 

 mens at the Royal Society, and he published an article on 

 "A New Theory of the Sun" in the April number of the 

 Nineteenth Century. All who have read my essay on " The 

 Fuel of the Sun" are surprised at the statement with which 

 the magazine article opens, yiz. : that this " maybe termed 

 a first attempt to open for the sun a debtor and creditor 

 account, inasmuch as he has hitherto been regarded only as 

 a great almoner pouring forth incessantly his boundless 

 wealth of heat, without receiving any of it back." 



Some of my friends suppose that Dr. Siemens has wilfully 

 ignored the most important element of my theory, and have 

 suggested indignation and protest on my part. I am quite 

 satisfied, however, that they are mistaken. I see plainly 

 enough that although Dr. Siemens quotes my book, he had 

 not read it when he did so; that in stating that " Grove, 

 Humboldt, Zoelluer, and Mattieu Williams have boldly as- 

 serted the existence of a space filled with matter," lie de- 

 rived this information from the paper of Dr. S terry Hunt 

 which he afterward quotes. This inference has been con- 

 firmed by subsequent correspondence with Dr. Siemens, 

 who tells me that he saw the book some years since but had 

 not read it. My contributions to the philosophy of solar 

 physics would have been far more widely known and better 

 appreciated had I followed the usual course of announcing 

 firstly "a working hypothesis," to warn others off the 

 ground, then reading a preliminary paper, then another and 

 another, and' so on during ten or a dozen years, instead of 



