GEOLOGY. 317 



projections must pass through attitudes that alternately increase and 

 decrease the attractive force. The more effective attitudes of increase 

 will fall before periastron and enhance the acquired velocities, while 

 the more effective attitudes of diminution fall after periastron and 

 reduce the effect of the backward pull. The chief effects, so far as 

 intensity of gravity is concerned, are those that arise close about the 

 passing of periastron. It appears, then, that the great resources of 

 internal repellancy in the stars is so expended in the dispersion of the 

 constituent matter as to diminish the restraining effects of backward 

 attraction, and so to leave the nebulae in the possession of a larger 

 percentage of the high velocities attained in their approach than they 

 would have held if they had remained in their undispersed state. In 

 this statement both stars are assumed to be dispersed. Both will, by 

 hypothesis, be subject to dispersion, but the degree of dispersion is sup- 

 posed to be chiefly dependent on the degree of eruptivity of the stars, 

 which is liable to vary greatly. 



C A second possible source of high nebular velocity is assignable to 

 electric dissociation. When the normal conditions of stars prevail, 

 the proportion of neutral electric states so vastly overwhelms the dis- 

 sociated states that the effect of the latter is regarded as negligible. 

 Even if dissociation were to go far, in the normal state of aggregation, 

 the positive and negative elements (so long as confined to the stellar 

 globes) would be so near together as to neutralize one another, in effect, 

 so far as their relations to distant bodies are concerned. But in the 

 case of the assigned nebular dispersion the conditions are sufficiently 

 unique to require special consideration. The inquiry has proceeded 

 on the basis of the following propositions : 



(1) The positive nucleus is less often detached from its atomic asso- 

 ciations than is the electron; (2) when detached, the electron moves at 

 a greater mean velocity than the positive element ; (3) when free, both 

 positive and negative elements move at velocities greatly beyond the 

 power of gravitative control of any star or cluster of stars; (4) when dis- 

 persion permits ready escape, the negative element surpasses the posi- 

 tive in radial discharge until the tension developed shall become great 

 enough to restrain its superior tendency to escape or to compensate it 

 by increased counteraction. 



It is reasoned that this primary tendency to wide differentiation in 

 space, and the succeeding tendency to neutraUzing counteraction, 

 would lead to an alternating concentric zonal distribution of the electric 

 states, in which the series of positive zones would center and have 

 their maxima in the great aggregates of matter whence they would die 

 away progressively, while the alternating series of negative zones 

 would have their relative dominance in reverse order; the two would 

 thus form an interacting series which, coupled with the originating 

 projections, would form a cycle, ever renewing itself by projectile 

 action and ever reneutralizing itself by counteraction. 



