474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



terrific convulsions, I must pronounce it as certain that they can not 

 have any part in giving birth to the new stars which astonished Tj'cho 

 Brahe and Kepler, or to those which have blazed forth in the heavens 

 in our own times. Though the greater cosmical bodies might, as Dr. 

 Croll supposes, be heated by collisions so intensely as to be capable of 

 diffusing heat and light for many millions of years, they could not 

 undergo the rapid decline of brilliancy which temporary stars exhibit. 

 Lockyer takes similar grounds in speaking of Nova-Cj'gni, " We are 

 driven," says he, " from the idea that these phenomena are produced 

 by the incandescence of large masses of matter, for, if so produced, the 

 running down of brilliancy would be exceedingly slow," A planetary 

 wreck, incorporating with the sun in the manner I have described, 

 woiild sweep through his external matter at the rate of about two hun- 

 dred and eighty miles a second. The heat produced mechanically at 

 the expense of this high velocity would not be so great in quantity as 

 that which might be expected from Dr. Croll's solar encounters ; but, 

 being confined to a very limited zone, it would attain much greater 

 intensity, be more effective for dissociation, and prove a more efficient 

 means for giving nebulae their existence and the peculiar character 

 which they exhibit. 



Since spectrum analysis has been brought to bear on the new stars, 

 the doctrine of their meteoric origin has obtained more currency in as- 

 tronomical circles. Though the incorporation of a remote world with a 

 greater sphere around which it previously revolved has been suggested 

 as the cause of such meteoric action, the idea has been somewhat un- 

 productive, in consequence of the loose manner in which inquiries on 

 the subject have been conducted, and the little care which has been 

 taken for obtaining correct solutions for the problems of motion and 

 stability involved in the questions at issue. The consequences of in- 

 stability and dismemberment in small orbits have been generally over- 

 looked. Recent developments, however, show some steps for correct- 

 ing the early errors and oversights in this new field of investigation. 

 In his recent work on " The Struggle for Existence in the Heavens," 

 Du Prel (alluding to the ultimate doom of the earth near the center of 

 our system) states that our world will end its career, not as one gigan- 

 tic meteor, but as numberless meteoric fragments ; and then the great 

 shower of stones in the solar atmosphere will show the inhabitants of 

 some very remote orb such a spectacle as was to be seen by terrestrial 

 astronomers in the constellation of Corona on the 12th of May, 1866. 

 A similar conclusion has been expressed frequently in my writings 

 during the past twenty-five years, especially in my papers published 

 in the reports of the British Association for 1857 and 1861, and in 

 my communications in the " Philosophical Magazine " for 1858, 1861, 

 and 1872. 



The meteoric phenomena of distant space may be profitably studied 

 in connection with those to be seen on a diminutive scale in our at- 



