It was in 1860 that Kirchhoff and Bunsen added this new weapon to the arsenal of scientific research. The spectroscope itself, as an instrument, was an invention in the department of optics, but its applications to chemistry were among the most obvious and the most startling of its achievements. With its aid new elements were discovered--rubidium, cæsium, thallium, indium, and gallium; in many lines of investigation it found immediate use; but, more than all, it made possible the analysis of the heavenly bodies, and proved that the same kinds of matter exist throughout the visible universe. Before the day of the spectroscope all speculation upon the chemistry of the stars was in vain; with its advent the material unity of planets, suns, and nebulæ was made clear. To the astronomer, a new eye was given; to the chemist, a new laboratory. Three sciences were brought to a single focus, and each one gained in power thereby. In its application to what may be called chemical astronomy, one achievement of the spectroscope was particularly notable--namely, the rehabilitation of the nebular hypothesis. When the gigantic telescope of Lord Rosse had resolved some nebulæ into clusters of stars, it was thought that all other nebulæ might be of the same character; the visible basis of the hypothesis was gone. But the spectroscope soon found among these celestial objects some which were truly clouds of incandescent gas, and so the nebular hypothesis received a new standing, becoming stronger than ever before. One point, however, was strange: these gaseous clouds were of the simplest composition; hydrogen and nitrogen were their chief constituents; how, then, could a world like ours originate from them?