Miscellaneous Intelligence. 317 



identical bright lines. Coincidences of this kind have indeed been 

 observed, bnt on careful examination these have been shown to be 

 due either to the presence of some one of the other elements as 

 an impurity, or to insufficient observational power. This absence 

 of coincident lines admits, however, of two explanations — either 

 that the elements are not decomposed at the temperature of the 

 electric spark, or, what appears to me a much more improbable 

 supposition, each one of the numbers of bright lines exhibited by 

 every element indicates the existence of a separate constituent, 

 no two of this enormous number being identical. 



Terrestrial analysis having thus failed to furnish favorable evi- 

 dence, we are compelled to see if any information is forthcoming 

 from the chemistry of the sun and stars. ..... 



" Since Bunsen and Kirchhoff's original discovery in 1859, the 

 labors of many men of science of all countries have largely in- 

 creased our knowledge of the chemical constitution of the sun and 

 stars, and to no one does science owe more in this direction 

 than to Lockyer and Huggins in this country, and to Young in 

 the New England beyond the seas. Lockyer has of late years 

 devoted his attention chiefly to the varying nature of the bright 

 lines seen under different conditions of time and place on the solar 

 surface, and from these observations he has drawn the inference 

 that the matching observed by Kirchhoff between, for instance, 

 the iron lines as seen in our laboratories and those visible in the 

 sun, has fallen to the ground. He further explains this want of 

 uniformity by the fact that at the higher transcendental temper- 

 atures of the sun the substance which we know here as iron is 

 resolved into separate components. Other experimentalists, how- 

 ever, while accepting Lockyer's facts as to the variations in the 

 solar spectrum, do not admit his conclusions, and would rather 

 explain the phenomena by the well-known differences which occur 

 in the spectra of all the elements when their molecules are subject 

 to change of temperature or change of position. 



" Further, arguments in favor of this idea of the evolution of the 

 elements have been adduced from the phenomena presented by 

 the specti'a of the fixed stars. It is well known that some of these 

 shine with a white, others with a red, and others again with a blue 

 light ; and the spectroscope, especially under the hands of Hug- 

 gins, has shown that the chemical constitution of these stars is 

 different. The white stars, of which Sirius may be taken as a 

 type, exhibit a much less complicated spectrum than the orange 

 and the red stars ; the spectra of the latter remind us more of 

 those of the metalloids and of chemical compounds than of the 

 metals. Hence it has been argued that in the white, presumably 

 the hottest, stars a celestial dissociation of our terrestrial elements 

 may have taken place, whilst in the cooler stars, probably the red, 

 combination even may occur. But even in the white stars we 

 have no direct evidence that a decomposition of any terrestrial 

 atom has taken place ; indeed we learn that the hydrogen atom, 

 as we know it here, can endure unscathed the inconceivably fierce 



