COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



gaseous form over a circumference of perhaps 

 thirty thousand million miles, it was just like 

 one of these nebulae. But since Herschel's time 

 many nebulae, which he regarded as irresolvable, 

 have been resolved into dense starry clusters. 

 The great nebula in Orion, upon which Her- 

 schel placed great reliance, was resolved both 

 by Lord Rosse's reflector and by our Harvard 

 refractor ; and the suspicion began accordingly 

 to arise that, if our telescopes were only power- 

 ful enough, there might prove to be no irre- 

 solvable nebulae at all. Hence many writers 

 thoughtlessly hastened to proclaim that the neb- 

 ular theory had lost its chief support, forget- 

 ting that the overwhelming evidence furnished 

 by the comparatively well-known structure of 

 the solar system must take precedence of any 

 hypothesis as to the character of remote and less- 

 known sidereal phenomena. Mr. Chambers, 

 in giving an account of the resolution of the 

 " dumb-bell " nebula in Vulpecula, rather glee- 

 fully wrote the 'obituary of the nebular hypo- 

 thesis ; but like many other obituaries, this one 

 turned out to be premature. For now came 

 Mr. Huggins, with his spectroscope, and proved 

 once for all that the wary and sagacious Her- 

 schel, who hardly ever made a false step, was 

 right, here as elsewhere. In 1864 Mr. Huggins 

 analyzed the light sent from a nebula in Draco, 

 and found it to contain the bright lines which 

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