  An attempt is made to guess the overall cosmic abundance of `metals' and the
contribution made by the energy released in their production to the total
intensity of extragalactic background light (EBL). With a comparable or
somewhat larger amount coming from white dwarfs, and a probably quite modest
contribution from AGNs, one can fairly easily account for the lower end of the
range of existing estimates for the total EBL intensity (50to 60 nwt m$^{-2}$
sterad$^{-1}$), but it seems more difficult should some higher estimates (90 to
100 in the same units) prove to be correct.
