M. Faye, a French astronomer, has propounded a theory, which somewhat modifies that of M. Kirchhoff. He thinks that the nucleus of the sun is neither solid nor liquid, but entirely gaseous. The solar spot, he, like M. Kirchhoff, takes to be an opening made accidentally in the sun's atmosphere by the condensation of vapours on certain points of that atmosphere. According to M. Faye, the spots are due to vertical currents of vapour ascending and descending, and the interception of the light of the sun's atmosphere by the predominant intensity of the ascending current.[7] The new theory, the result of the optical experiments of the German physicists, appears to explain all the facts which have been observed, and it has therefore been generally accepted. Some divergences exist on questions of detail, but astronomers are nowadays almost unanimous in regarding the sun as a great body, incandescent in all its parts, as a globe in a state of fusion, surrounded by a burning atmosphere, or, as M. Faye states it, a simple agglomeration of incandescent gases. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [6] Quoted by Flammarion in his "_Pluralité des mondes habités_." [7] See "_Le Soleil_," by M. A. Guillemin, pp. 194-208. [Illustration] CHAPTER THE NINTH. THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL BEINGS.--THE SOLAR RAYS ARE EMANATIONS FROM THE SPIRITUAL BEINGS WHO LIVE IN THE SUN.--THESE BEINGS THUS PRODUCE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE UPON THE EARTH.--THE CONTINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, INEXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, EXPLAINED BY THE EMANATION FROM THE SOULS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN.--THE WORSHIP OF FIRE, AND THE ADORATION OF THE SUN AMONG DIFFERENT PEOPLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. FROM the discussion of physical astronomy contained in the preceding chapters, we have concluded, with MM. Kirchhoff and Faye, that the sun is a mass of burning gases. But, our readers will ask, if this be so--if the sun is a gaseous incandescent mass, or a globe of matter in a state of fusion, surrounded by an atmosphere of burning gas, where do you place its inhabitants, and under what form do you picture them?