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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



many cases a large quantity of debris must be 

 shot forth in all directions, much of which may 

 have been exposed to no greater violence than 

 individual pieces of rock experience in a land-slip 

 or in blasting by gunpowder. Should the time 

 when this earth comes into collision with another 

 body, comparable in dimensions to itself, be when 

 it is still clothed, as at present, with vegetation, 

 many great and small fragments carrying seed 

 and living plants and animals would undoubtedly 

 be scattered through space. Hence and because 

 we all confidently believe that there are at pres- 

 ent, and have been from time immemorial, many 

 worlds of life besides our own, we must regard it 

 as probable in the highest degree that there are 

 countless seed-bearing meteoric stones moving 

 about through space. If at the present instant 

 no life existed upon this earth, one such stone 

 falling upon it might lead to its becoming covered 

 with vegetation. " I am fully conscious," he con- 

 cludes, " of the many scientific objections which 

 may be urged against this hypothesis, but I be- 

 lieve them to be all answerable. . . . The hy- 

 pothesis that life originated on this earth through 

 moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another 

 world may seemVwild and visionary ; all I main- 

 tain is that it is not unscientific." J 



Sir William Thomson's views, thus plainly set 

 forth, did not fail to attract adverse criticism. 

 Before we proceed to consider the comments 

 which his hypothesis called forth, we may call 

 the reader's attention for a short time to specu- 

 lations in the same direction which have appeared 

 in the writings of scientific* men in France and 

 Germany. 



First, we must refer to a remarkable passage 

 in the great work of Count A. de Bylandt Palster- 

 camp, on the " Theory of Volcanoes." 2 He wrote 

 in 1835, at a time when Laplace's theory that me- 

 teorites were hurled at us from lunar volcanoes 

 was still generally received, and this will account 

 to some extent for the source of the cosmical 

 masses of which he treats. What is mainly worthy 

 of notice is their character, of carriers of the fac- 

 ulty of organization, which he attributes to them. 

 In the chapter intituled " Principe d'apres lequel 

 le premier Developpement de notre Globe peut 

 s'ctre effectue," he writes : " It may be amat- 

 ter of curiosity, but it is in no wise necessary, 

 that we should know on what principle or from 



J " Address of Sir "William Thomson, Knt., LL. D., 

 F. K. S., President." London : Taylor & Francis, 1871, 

 p. 27. 



2 " Theorie des Volcans. Par le Comte A. de Bylandt 

 Palstercamp." Paris : Levrault, 1838, tome i., p. 95. 



what organized body the great mass of our globe 

 has been derived ; it is sufficient for us that we 

 exist in a manner where everything is perfectly 

 organized, at least in so far as the aim of our ex- 

 istence is concerned. Many scientific men have 

 exercised their imagination on this problem with- 

 out being able to come to any definite decision. 

 Some maintain that the nucleus of our globe was 

 a fragment of a body which in its cosmical path 

 had dashed itself into fragments against the sun, 

 which the very close proximity of some comet to 

 that star gives grounds for believing. Others 

 suppose us to be a vast aerolite thrown off from 

 the sun himself 1 with a force proportional to its 

 mass, to a zone where the motion is determined 

 in accordance with the laws of reciprocal attrac- 

 tion, and that this fragment carried in itself the 

 germ of all that organization which we see 

 around us, and of which we form a part. ( Que 

 cet eclat port ait enlui le germe de ioute cette or- 

 ganisation que nous observons ici et dont nous fai- 

 sons partie.) They suppose the satellites to be 

 small parts or fragments detached from the chief 

 mass by the violence of the rotation at the time 

 it is hurled forth, or by the excessively high orig- 

 inal temperature, increased by the fall, which 

 produced a very violent dilatation of the matter, 

 and severed some portions from it. These aero- 

 lites, it is said, by way of comparison, contain 

 within them the principle common to the body 

 whence they have been derived, just as a grain 

 of seed carried by the wind is able to produce at 

 a remote distance a tree like its prototype, with 

 such modifications only as are due to soil or cli- 

 mate." 



In the spring of 1871 Prof. Helmholtz de- 

 livered at Heidelberg and at Cologne a discourse 

 on the origin of the solar system, which he printed 

 in the third collection of his interesting " Po- 

 puliire wissenschaftliche Vortrage," published last 

 year. 2 He directed attention on that occasion 

 to the facts that meteorites sometimes contain 

 compounds of carbon and hydrogen, and that the 

 light emitted by the head of a comet gives a spec- 

 trum which bears the closest resemblance to that 

 of the electric light when the arc is surrounded 

 by a gaseous hydrocarbon. Carbon is the char- 

 acteristic element of the organic compounds of 

 which all things living are built up. " Who can 

 say," he asks, " whether these bodies which wan- 



1 He alludes here in a note to the theory held by La- 

 place and others. 



2 " PopulSre wissenschaftliche Vortrage. Von H. 

 Helmholtz." Braunschweig : Vieweg und Sohn, 1876. 

 Drittes Heft, p. 135. 



