Page:Sir William Herschel, his life and works (1881).djvu/231

Rh The long strata of nebulæ, which he had before described under the name of "telescopic Milky Ways," might well be accounted for by masses of this fluid lying beyond the regions of the seventh-magnitude stars. This fluid might exist independently of stars. If it is self-luminous, it seems more fit to produce a star by its condensation, than to depend upon the star for its own existence. Such were a few of the theorems to which his discovery of this nebula led him. The hypothesis of an elastic shining fluid existing in space, sometimes in connection with stars, sometimes distinct from them, was adopted and never abandoned. How well the spectroscope has confirmed this idea it is not necessary to say. We know the shining fluid does exist, and in late years we have seen the reverse of the process imagined by. A star has actually, under our eyes, become a planetary nebula, and the cycle of which he gave the first terms is complete.

In five separate memoirs (1802, 1811, 1814, 1817, and 1818) elaborated his views of the sidereal system. The whole