MODERN EVOLUTION. 



179 



confirmations of the nebular theory is the funda- 

 mental identity of the stuff of which the universe is 

 made; a fact which entered into the prevision of the 

 Ionian cosmologists. Dr. Huggins says that " if the 

 whole earth were heated to the temperature of the 

 sun, its spectrum would resemble very closely the 

 solar spectrum." 



In referring to this, there may be carrying of 

 " owls to Athens," but that re-statements may some- 

 times be needful has illustration in Lord Salisbury's 

 Presidential Address to the British Association, 1894, 

 wherein the assumed absence of oxygen and nitrogen 

 in the sun's spectrum is adduced as an argument 

 against the theory of the common origin of the 

 bodies of the solar system. Speaking of the pre- 

 dominant proportion of oxygen in the solid and 

 liquid substances of the earth, and of the pre- 

 dominance of nitrogen in our atmosphere, his lord- 

 ship asked, " if the earth be a detached bit whisked 

 off the mass of the sun, as cosmogonists love to tell 

 us, how comes it that, in leaving the sun, we cleaned 

 him out so completely of his nitrogen and oxygen 

 that not a trace of these gases remains behind to 

 be discovered even by the searching vision of the 

 spectroscope? " If Lord Salisbury had consulted 

 Dr. Huggins, or some foreign astronomer of equal 

 rank, as Duner or Scheiner, he would not have put 

 a question exposing his ignorance, and unmasking 

 his prejudice. These authorities would have told 

 him. that when a mixture of the incandescent vapours 



