Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, “the wildest assumption possible,” that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the axiom of the sun’s combustion and gradual extinction?  They have no means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of determining, the sun’s physical condition; for (a) they are ignorant of the atmospheric limits; (b) even though it were proved that matter, such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls upon, they are unable “to discuss of the effect of motions wholly surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable velocity of many meteors;” (c) confessedly—­they “have no means of learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the solar substance is concerned in sending out that light.  This light “may come from the surface layers only;” and, “it may be but a shell” .... (truly!); and finally, (d) they have yet to learn “how far combustion, properly so-called, can take place within the sun’s mass;” and “whether these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only processes of combustion which can actually take place there.”  Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after all “that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible characteristic of the light of the glowing gas.”  Thus, the whole basis of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland’s objection), they, the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz., that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages, prominences, projections and horns.  Indeed, when one finds one of the authorities of the age in physical science—­Professor Tyndall—­saying that “no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth—­would be at all competent to maintain the sun’s combustion;” and again:—­“.... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun’s expenditure.  And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store ....”—­after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of “a hot globe cooling,” one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency.  Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as