THE SUN 73 



very busily occupied about, and it seems to have been 

 rendered at least highly probable I do not say that it 

 has been proved that a great many of the chemical 

 elements of this our earth exist in the sun such as, for 

 instance, iron, soda, magnesia, and some others. We 

 cannot here state the extraordinary facts on which this 

 conclusion rests. But the conclusion itself is not so ab- 

 solutely strange and startling as it may at first appear. 

 The analysis of meteorolites, which there can be no doubt 

 have come to the earth from very remote regions of the 

 Planetary spaces, has, up to the present time, exhibited 

 no new chemical element so that a community of 

 nature, at least as regards material constitution, between 

 our earth and the rest of the bodies of our system, is at 

 all events no unexpected, as it is, in itself, no unreason- 

 able conclusion. 



(32.) Not that it is meant, by anything above said, to 

 imply that the light of the sun is that of any flame, in the 

 usual sense of the word. A late celebrated French phil- 

 osopher, M. Arago, indeed, considered that he had 

 proved it to be so by certain optical tests. But in the 

 first place his proof is vitiated by an enormous oversight; 

 and the thing, besides, is a physical impossibility. The 

 light and heat of the sun cannot possibly arise from the 

 burning of/ue!, so as to give out what we call flame. If 

 it be the sun's substance that burns (I mean consumes), 

 where is the oxygen to come from ^ and what is to become 

 of the ashes, and other products of combustion 1 Even 

 supposing the oxygen supplied from the material, as in 

 the cases of gunpowder, Bengal light, or gun coiton, still 



