the proper function of a sun.

Faye's views, which were communicated to the Academy of Sciences,
January 16, 1865,[433] were avowedly based on the anomalous mode of
solar rotation discovered by Carrington. This may be regarded either as
an acceleration increasing from the poles to the equator, or as a
retardation increasing from the equator to the poles, according to the
rate of revolution we choose to assume for the unseen nucleus. Faye
preferred to consider it a retardation produced by ascending currents
continually left behind as the sphere widened in which the matter
composing them was forced to travel. He further supposed that the depth
from which these vertical currents rose, and consequently the amount of
retardation effected by their ascent to the surface, became
progressively greater as the poles were approached, owing to the
considerable flattening of the spheroidal surface from which they
started;[434] but the adoption of this expedient has been shown to
involve inadmissible consequences.

The extreme internal mobility betrayed by Carrington's and Spoerer's
observations led to the inference that the matter composing the sun was
mainly or wholly gaseous. This had already been suggested by Father
Secchi[435] a year earlier, and by Sir John Herschel in April,
1864;[436] but it first obtained general currency through Faye's more
elaborate presentation. A physical basis was afforded for the view by
Cagniard de la Tour's experiments in 1822,[437] proving that, under
conditions of great heat and pressure, the vaporous state was compatible
with a very considerable density. The position was strengthened when
Andrews showed, in 1869,[438] that above a fixed limit of temperature,
varying for different bodies, true liquefaction is impossible, even
though the pressure be so tremendous as to retain the gas within the
same space that enclosed the liquid. The opinion that the mass of the
sun is gaseous now commands a very general assent; although the gaseity
admitted is of such a nature as to afford the consistence rather of
honey or pitch than of the aeriform fluids with which we are familiar.

On another important point the course of subsequent thought was
powerfully influenced by Faye's conclusions in 1865. Arago somewhat
hastily inferred from experiments with the polariscope the wholly
gaseous nature of the visible disc of the sun. Kirchhoff, on the
contrary, believed (erroneously, as we now know) that the brilliant