Proceedings of Learned Societies. 397 



of life in planets belonging to such a sun, and similarly deprived of 

 oceans, clouds, and verdure. jB Pegasi is the only other star con- 

 stituted in like manner. Photographs of drawings of the stellar 

 spectra having been shown by the electric lantern, the colours of 

 double stars were referred to, and the spectra of Albireo (/3 Cygni) 

 shown, in which the one star had numerous lines in the red, and 

 then leaving the yellow predominant, and the other was full of lines 

 in the red and yellow, allowing the blue to remain in the ascendant. 

 Drawings of numerous nebulae having been shown, Mr. Huggins 

 then narrated his important discovery that a number of these 

 extraordinary bodies, including the Planetary Nebulas, the Ring and 

 Dumb-bell Nebulas, and the Great Nebula in Orion, had unexpectedly 

 shown that they consisted of gaseous matter in a luminous state 

 only, and that such gases were nitrogen, hydrogen, and an unknown 

 substance. Those bodies which were clusters gave continuous 

 spectra, and the nebula in Andromeda, although irresolvable in the 

 telescope, gave the coloured band due to stars. The singular uni- 

 formity of composition, and the fact that only one line out of several- 

 nitrogen lines was visible, had given rise to much speculation. The 

 conclusions drawn by the lecturer were — that with respect 

 to the stars, they appear to consist, at least in part, of substances 

 identical with those composing the earth and sun, and that the 

 differences are those of adaptation and detail — not of plan or 

 structure. That as the majority of elements found in the stars 

 are those which are most connected with organic life here, it is 

 reasonable to suppose that these stars are suns surrounded with 

 planets like our central orb, and thus being, like it, the energizing 

 centres of systems analogous to that of which our globe forms a 

 part, and equally adapted to be the abode of living beings. On the 

 other hand, it would result from the constitution of the nebulas thus 

 ascertained, that they are not necessarily at the enormous distance 

 which the theory of their being clusters of stars, the light of which 

 had blended into nebulosity, requires. The extreme simplicity of 

 their chemical constitution also negatives the notion that they are 

 examples of Sir W. Herschel's nebulous or primordial fluid, from 

 which, by condensation, stars were formed, as, if so, we should find 

 as many light lines in their spectra as there are dark ones in the 

 fully formed stars ; or if it be contended that they are in a more 

 elementary state, and that our so-called elements are perhaps com- 

 pounds, then, at least, some indications of progress would have 

 been met with by greater complexity in a few of these bodies. 

 On the whole, the lecturer believes that these true nebulas are 

 bodies possessing a structure and a purpose in relation to the 

 universe altogether distinct and of another order from the great 

 group of cosmical bodies to which our sun and the fixed stars 

 belong:. 



