THE SUN. 49 



renheit's thermometer below the zero of that scale. No 

 animal or vegetable could resist such a frost for an houi, 

 any more than it could live for an hour in boiling water. 

 Such a frost exists, no doubt, over the dark half of the 

 moon, which has no atmosphere, neither air nor vapour, 

 and in all probability quite as violent an extreme of heat, 

 a boiling temperature at least, over the bright half; so 

 that we may pretty well make up our minds as to that 

 half of the moon at least which we see, being uninhabited ; 

 while on the other hand, if it would not lead too far 

 away from our immediate subject, I think it might be 

 shown on admissible principles, that Venus and Mer- 

 cury, in spite of their nearness to the sun, and possibly 

 also Jupiter and Saturn, in spite of their remoteness, 

 may have climates in which animal and vegetable life 

 such as we see them here, might be maintained. 



(3.) But it is with the sun itself that we are now con- 

 cerned. What I am going to say about the sun will. 

 consist of a series of statements so enormous in all 

 their proportions, that I dare say, before I have done, 

 some of my hearers will almost think me mad, or in- 

 tending to palm on them a string of rhodomontades, 

 like some of the mythical stories of the Hindus. And 

 yet there is nothing more certain in modern science 

 than the truth of some of the most extravagant of these 

 statements ; and, wild as they may seem to those who 

 for the first time hear them, they appear not only not 

 extravagant, but actually dwarfed into littleness by the 

 still vaster revelations of that science respecting the scale 

 ot' the visible universe ; in every part of which when we 



D 



