654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



itation of its parts toward the centre, and the process of cooling at its 

 (surface, the rotation must necessarily be accelerated, and consequently 

 the centrifugal force augmented, particularly at its equatorial parts. 

 In fact, this could not be done -without the use of illustrative diagrams. 

 Suffice it to state, that the final result would be, the development of a 

 system of planets, revolving in a common direction around a vast cen- 

 tral solar mass, with subordinate systems of satellites circulating in a 

 like direction around their primaries. These are precisely the arrange- 

 ments which are found to exist in our solar system. 



Assuming that the primitive solar nebula rotated on its axis, as the 

 sun does, from west to east, the following consequences were deduced 

 from the theory, viz. : 1. All the planets should move around the sun 

 from west to east. 2. All the planets should rotate on their axes from 

 west to east. 3. All the satellites should rotate on their axes from 

 west to east. 4. All the planets should revolve about the sun in orbits 

 nearly coincident with the plane of the solar equator. 5. All the 

 satellites should revolve about their primaries nearly in the planes of 

 the equators of their respective planets. 6. All the planets should 

 revolve in orbits of small eccentricity. V. All the satellites shoiald 

 revolve in orbits of small eccentricity. 8. The central mass the sun 

 should rotate on his axis in less time than any of the planets revolve 

 about him in their orbits. 9. The primary planets should revolve on 

 their axes in less time than any of their satellites revolve around 

 them; and 10. The central mass, left after the process of genesis was 

 completed, should contain a much larger quantity of matter than the 

 sum of the masses separated. All of these arrangements (with a few 

 unimportant deviations), were shown to exist in the solar system. 

 Recapitulating these coincidences, we obtain the following significant 



Total, 390 coincidences. 



" We thus see that there are no less than 390 independent phe- 

 nomena of which the law of gravitation gives no account which are 

 simple consequences of the Nebular Hypothesis. In the aggregate, 

 they imply a very large number of facts complex diverse uncon- 

 nected with each other having no mutual dependence all accounted 

 for by a simple supposition, and the aid of the known laws of matter 

 and motion." It can hardly be denied that, regarded as a pure hy- 



