THE C0L0X7EED STAES ABOUT KAPPA CEUCIS, 95 



eible, and therefore the conclusions wrong, yet I cannot but 

 think that we must either give up analogy, our safest guide in 

 such reasoning, or admit the gradual extinction of light in its 

 passage through space. For. if we consider the view which, witli 

 recent researches into the solar system, we must take of it, with 

 its millions of meteor streams cutting the ecliptic at all angles, 

 its thousands of comets, its meteoric dust, its zodiacal light, 

 its solar corona, its material atmosphere so to speak, occupy- 

 ing not only all the interplanetary space, but more or less to 

 the limit of the sun's attractive force, forming, may be, the 

 nebulous light seen by both Herschels with their powerful tele- 

 scopes as a "faint stippling, seen and lost again"; and if we 

 are to take our sun as a type of other suns, and in the mind's 

 eye see all surrounded by such an atmosphere, and people 

 all the interspaces with myriads of myriads of comets ; nay, 

 more, if we accept the view held to be most probable by many 

 astronomers, that it is by the deposition of this material 

 atmosphere on the sun and planets that they are hourly growing 

 and finding those stores of light and heat by which all things 

 live, — it is beyond question that there must have been a time 

 when this material atmosphere was far more dense than it is at 

 the present moment, and that there must be in every direction 

 other suns in all stages of the process from the great nebulosity 

 " loithout form and void'''' to the finished sun, whatever that may 

 be ; or, in other words, amidst the infinitude of such systems 

 with which we are surrounded, there are places where probably a 

 sensible amount of clearing up has taken place withiu the last 

 thirty -five years. 



And, I think, in this view we find a rational explanation of the 

 appearance of new stars in this cluster, more especially since it 

 has been shown by others as well as myself, that in this region 

 of the heavens, about the remarkable star Eta Argus, strange 

 clearings up, so to speak, or wanings of nebulous light, have taken 

 place, and many stars have come to view, with telescopes far 

 inferior to Herschel's. 



And whether we admit this view or not, one thing is absolutely 

 certain : under such a material atmosphere we live and make 

 our observations, and we are not yet prepared to say with cer- 

 tainty whether there may not be such changes going on in it aa 

 will suffice for a full explanation of the appearance of these small 

 Btars, if not of the great changes about Eta Argus. 



H 



