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§§ 310—312] and had accordingly put into "the shining fluid" class (chapter, § 260). This last discovery, being exactly analogous to Herschel's experience when he first began to examine nebulae hitherto only observed with inferior telescopes, naturally led to a revival of the view that nebulae are indistinguishable from clusters of stars, though many of the arguments from probability urged by Herschel and others were in reality unaffected by the new discoveries.

311. The question of the status of nebulae in its simplest form may be said to have been settled by the first application of spectrum analysis. Fraunhofer (§ 299) had seen as early, as 1823 that stars had spectra characterised like that of the sun by dark lines, and more complete investigations made soon after Kirchhoff's discoveries by several astronomers, in particular by Sir William Huggins and by the eminent Jesuit astronomer Angela Secchi (1818–1878), confirmed this result as regards nearly all stars observed.

The first spectrum of a nebula was obtained by Sir William Huggins in 1864, and was seen to consist of three bright lines; by 1868 he had examined 70, and found in about one-third of the cases, including that of the Orion nebula, a similar spectrum of bright lines. In these cases therefore the luminous part of the nebula is gaseous, and Herschel's suggestion of a "shining fluid" was confirmed in the most satisfactory way. In nearly all cases three bright lines are seen, one of which is a hydrogen line, while the other two have not been identified, and in the case of a few of the brighter nebulae some other lines have also been seen. On the other hand, a considerable number of nebulae, including many of those which appear capable of telescopic resolution into star clusters, give a continuous spectrum, so that there is no clear spectroscopic evidence to distinguish them from clusters of stars, since the dark lines seen usually in the spectra of the latter could hardly be expected to be visible in the case of such faint objects as nebulae.

312. Stars have been classified, first by Secchi (1863), afterwards in slightly different ways by others, according to the general arrangement of the dark lines in their spectra; and some attempts have been made to base on these 26