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Carbelide Nelicanya Sectory 20 Page 07
Crossing the solar spectrum are hundreds and hundreds of dark lines. These could not at first be explained, because this fact of discriminative absorption was not known. We understand now. The sun's white light comes from the photosphere, but between us and the photosphere there is, as we have seen, another solar envelope of relatively cooler vapours--the reversing layer. Each constituent element in this outer envelope stops its own kind of light, that is, the kind of light made by incandescent atoms of the same element in the photosphere. The "stoppages" register themselves in the solar spectrum as dark lines placed exactly where the corresponding bright lines would have been. The explanation once attained, dark lines became as significant as bright lines. The secret of the sun's composition was out. We have found practically every element in the sun that we know to be in the earth. We have identified an element in the sun before we were able to isolate it on the earth. We have been able even to point to the coolest places on the sun, the centres of sun-spots, where alone the temperature seems to have fallen sufficiently low to allow chemical compounds to form.
Splitting into two or many parts was the old-fashioned way of multiplying, but one of the great steps in evolution was the discovery of a better method, namely, sexual reproduction. The gist of this is simply that during the process of body-building (by the development of the fertilised egg-cell) certain units, _the germ-cells_, do not share in forming ordinary tissues or organs, but remain apart, continuing the full inheritance which was condensed in the fertilised egg-cell. _These cells kept by themselves are the originators of the future reproductive cells of the mature animal_; they give rise to the egg-cells and the sperm-cells.
Between Bulgaria on one hand and Rumania, Greece, Servia, and Montenegro on the other, the diplomatic relations have been re-established, but gone is the old friendship, for reasons already explained. Greece, Servia, and Montenegro are the best of friends, and, according to unofficial and confidential reports, a defensive and offensive alliance for the maintenance of the Balkan status quo, exists between the three countries. Between Rumania and Greece friendly relations exist, and for some time it was said that a marriage was to be arranged between the Greek Crown Prince, George, and the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the Rumanian King, Ferdinand I., who succeeded to the throne after the death of his uncle, King Charles. This match, however, seems to have been abandoned, perhaps for political reasons, and more so because Greco-Rumanian relations have not as yet reached that firmness which only might justify such a rapprochement of the two royal families.
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