86 COSMOS. 



not resolvable which, producing a general brightness in the 

 field of view, 1< rm, as it were, the back-ground of the picture." 

 The appearance of these clouds, of the brightly-beaming con- 

 Btellation Argo, of the Milky Way between Scorpio, the Cen- 

 taur, and the Southern Cross, the picturesque beauty, if one 

 may so speak, of the whole expanse of the southern celestial 

 hemisphere, has left upon my mind an ineffaceable impression. 

 The zodiacal light, which rises in a pyramidal form, and con- 

 stantly contributes, by its mild radiance, to the external beauty 

 of the tropical nights, is either a vast nebulous ring, rotating 

 between the Earth and Mars, or, less probably, the exterior 

 stratum of the solar atmosphere. Besides these luminous clouds 

 and nebulae of definite form, exact and corresponding observa- 

 tions indio-ate the existence and the general distribution of an 

 apparently non-luminous, infinitely-divided matter, which pos- 

 sesses a force of resistance, and manifests its presence in Encke's, 

 and perhaps also in Biela's comet, by diminishing their eccen- 

 tricity and shortening their period of revolution. Of this im- 

 peding, ethereal, and cosmical matter, it may be supposed that 

 it is in motion ; that it gravitates, notwithstanding its original 

 tenuity ; that it is condensed in the vicinity of the great mass 

 of the Sun ; and, finally, that it may, for myriads of ages, 

 have been augmented by the vapor emanating from the tails 

 of comets. 



If we now pass from the consideration of the vaporous mat- 

 ter of the immeasurable regions of space {ovpavov x^pTog)* 

 — whether, scattered without definite form and limits, it ex- 

 ists as a cosmical ether, or is condensed into nebulous spots, 

 and becomes comprised among the solid agglomerated bodies 

 of the universe — ^we approach a class of phenomena exclusive- 

 ly designated by the term of stars, or as the sidereal world. 



* I should have made use, in the place of garden of the universe, of 

 the beautiful expression ;t;6/9rof ovpavov, borrowed by Hesychius from 

 an unknown poet, if ;t;6prof had not rather signified in general an in- 

 closed space. The connection with the German garten and the En- 

 glish garden, gards in Gothic (derived, according to Jacob Grimm, from 

 gairdan, to gird), is, however, evident, as is likewise the affinity with 

 the Sclavonic grad, gorod, and as Pott remarks, in his Etymol. Forschun- 

 gen, th. i., s. 144 (Etymol. Researches), with the Latin chors, whence 

 we have the Spanish carte, the French cour, and the English word court, 

 together with the Ossetic khart. To these may be further added the 

 Scandinavian gard,^ gdrd, a place inclosed, as a court, or a country 

 seat, and the Persian gerd, gird, a district, a circle, a princely country 

 Beat, a castle or city, as we find the term applied to the names of places 

 in Firdusi's Schahnameh, as SiyawaTcschgird, Darabgird, &c. 



* / This word is written gaard in the Danish.l — TV. 



