1 66 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



either blood-red streak or corona. There is no reason 

 to believe that he even read of them. His pigmy moun- 

 tains of three or four hundred miles were molehills to 

 the vast tongues of red flame shot up from the burning 

 ocean of the sun's surface to a height of 200,000 miles 

 in a few minutes, rising from and falling back into that 

 ocean's bosom in a couple of hours. Herschel would 

 have revelled in these gigantic strides of living flame. 

 He would have cast away his theory of solid body, 

 atmosphere and luminous solar clouds. Probably he 

 would have held fast to his comparison of the light- 

 clouds to our northern lights, and to his idea that the 

 comets help to maintain the light and heat of our sun. 

 How his glory is kept up from age to age, from mil- 

 lennium to millennium, we know as little as he did. 

 Truly we are only at the beginning of our knowledge 

 of this and other glorious stars; Herschel may have 

 thought, and probably did think, that we were nearly 

 at the end. 



