384 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



million of years, in flight of light, would be requisite, in regard to the most 

 distant, to trace the enormous interval. 



But after all, what is all this, vast as the attainment may seem, in the ex- 

 ploration of the extent of the works of the Almighty ? For in this attempt 

 to look into space, as the great reflector enables us, we see but a mere specie 

 for SPACE is INFINITE. Could we take, therefore, not the tardy wings of the 

 morning, with the speed of the mere spread of day, nor flee as with the leaden 

 wings of light, which would require years to reach the nearest star, but, like 

 unhampered tliought, could we speed to the furthest visible nebula at a bound, 

 there, doubtless, we should have a continuance of revelations ; and if bound 

 after bound were taken, and new spheres of space for ten thousand repeti- 

 tions explored, should we not probably find each additional sphere of telescopic 

 vision garnished with suns and nebulous configurations, rich and marvelous as 

 our own ? If these views serve to enlarge our conception of creative won- 

 ders, and of the glory and power of the Great Architect of the heavens, 

 should they not deeply impress us in respect to the Divine condescension in 

 regarding so graciously this little, inferior world of ours ! Animated with the 

 spirit of the Psalmist, we shall each one surely be disposed appropriately to 

 join in his emphatic saying: " When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy 

 fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained ; what is man, that 

 Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him ?" 



ON THE ASTEROID PLANETS. 



At the Providence Meeting of the American Association Professor Alex- 

 ander, of Princeton, presented a paper on the character of the original asteroid 

 planet. By a skillful use of evidence he has arrived at almost a certainty 

 that in the space between Mars and Jupiter once revolved a planet a little 

 more than 2 - 8 times as far from the sun as our earih. The equatorial diameter 

 was about 70,000 miles, but the polar diameter only 8 miles! It was not a 

 globe but a wafer, nay, a disk of a thickness of only 1-9,000 of its diameter. 

 Its time of revolution was 3 - 698 days, say 3 days, 15 hours, 45 minutes. The 

 inclination of its orbit to the ecliptic was about 4. It met a fate that might 

 have been anticipated from so thin a body wheeling so furiously, for its motion 

 on its axis was 1-1 6th of its velocity in its orbit, say 2,477 miles per hour. 

 It burst as grindstones and fly-wheels sometimes do. We have found 37 

 fragments of it and call them Asteroids. YHien it burst some parts were 

 moving 2,477 miles per hour faster than the center did, and some as much 

 slower; that is, some parts moved 4,954 miles per hour faster than the others. 

 These described a much larger orbit than the planet did, and the place where 

 it burst was their perihelion. Others described a smaller orbit, because they 

 left that point with a diminished velocity it was their aphelion. Some flew 

 above the orbit of the planet and had their ascending node. Others flew 

 below and it was their descending node. They seemed to go almost in pairs. 

 Two went very far out of the plane of the orbit so that they pass the limits of 

 the zodiac, and it is found that the ascending node of 18 correspond nearly 

 with the descending node of 17. So nearly even were they distributed. And 



