Wollaston’s mistake is based on the assumption that, under the circumstances supposed, the atmospheric pressure and density, at any given distance from the centre of the given orb, will vary inversely with the square of that distance. As the area of the base upon which such pressure is exerted varies _directly_ with the square of the distance, the total atmosphere above every imaginable starting-distance would thus be ever the same. That this assumption, so utterly at variance with the known laws of atmospheric distribution, should have remained unchallenged for half a century, and that the conclusions based upon it should be accepted by the whole scientific world, and repeated in standard treatises, such as those of the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” etc., etc., is, I think, one of the most remarkable curiosities presented by the history of science. If it were merely a little cobweb in some obscure corner of philosophy, there would be nothing surprising in its escape from the besom of scientific criticism; but this is so far from being the case, that it has hung, since 1822, like a dark veil obscuring another, a wider, and more interesting view of the universe which the idea of an universal atmosphere opens out. But I must now proceed to the next stage of the argument. Starting from the conclusion reached in the previous chapters, that the atmosphere of our earth is but a portion of an universal elastic medium which it has attached to itself by its gravitation, and that all the other orbs of space must, in like manner, have obtained their proportion, I take the earth’s mass, and its known quantity of atmospheric envelope as units, and calculating by the simple rule I have laid down in opposition to Wollaston’s, I find that the total weight of the sun’s atmosphere should be at least 117,681,623 times that of the earth’s, and the pressure at its base equal, at least, to 15,233 atmospheres. What must be the results of such an atmospheric accumulation? The experiment of compressing air in the condensing syringe, and thereby lighting a piece of German tinder, is familiar to all who have studied even the rudiments of physical science. Taking the formulæ of Leslie and Dalton, and applying them to the solar pressure of 15,233 atmospheres, we arrive according to Leslie, at the inconceivable temperature of 380,832° C., or 685,529° F., as that due to this amount of compression, or, according to Dalton, at 761,665° F. What will be the effects of such a degree of heat upon materials similar to those of which our earth is composed? Let us first take the case of water, which, for reasons I have stated, should be regarded as atmospheric, or universally diffused matter.