THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF OTHER WORLDS. 323 
occurrence of this one line only in the nebulae may not indicate a form of 
matter more elementary than nitrogen, and which our analysis has not yet 
enabled us to detect. 
Men of imaginative minds have seized, somewhat too 
hastily, we think, npon the discoveries made by Dr. Miller 
and Mr. Huggins, and expressed themselves rejoicingly on 
the confirmation given by them to certain geological hypo- 
theses of world formation. It is prudent to work dili- 
gently and wait patiently — advancing with moderation 
towards the goal. We appear, it is true, to have proved 
that all the planetary and stellar worlds are made after the 
type of our own Earth. We learn that they act in relation to 
light in precisely the same manner as does terrestrial matter, 
and this mysterious bond unites us, as one family of worlds 
and parent suns. There is something highly poetical, and at 
the same time sublimely philosophical in the idea that our 
terrestrial spheroid, as well as all the other planets, belonged 
originally to the Sun, as having been formed from detached 
nebulous rings of the solar atmosphere. By the agency of 
light and heat, our system is united with other systems glit- 
tering in the firmament. The tranquil beams of the distant 
nebulge assure us, that, although they may be constituted 
of elements yet to be discovered, they are in no respect 
different from terrestrial matter, except in the extreme 
tenuity in which it probably exists in those remote forma- 
tions which are only known to us by their phosphorescent 
gleams. Therefore, to carry our speculations into those 
boundless fields to which light guides us, and trace, if we can, 
the condensation of vapours into stars, is a soul-ennobling 
exercise. At the same time let us remember, — since we are 
yet in ignorance of the force which binds the particles of 
matter to form a pebble, and since we know nothing of the 
power which determines the geometry of . a crystal, — that we 
should, with all humility, pause, before we pronounce a theory 
upon the formation of a star. 
VOL. IV. — NO. XV. 
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