130 



THE ASTEROins. 



as a necessary consequence of the operation of the known laws of na- 

 ture. It will be seen, moreover, by the following table, that, unlike the 

 great laws of Kepler, it is by no means strictly and universally correct. 



Distance according to 

 Bode's law. 



Miles. 



28,000,000 



66,500,000 



95,000,000 



152,000,000 



266,000,000 



494,000,000 



950.000,000 



1,862,000,000 



True Distance from 

 the Sun. 

 Miles. 

 Mercurv, 36,765,000 



Venus," 68,717,000 



Earth, 95,000,000 



Mars, 144,750,000 



Asteroids,* 251,000,000 



Jupiter, 494,26.3,000 



Saturn, 906,190,000 



Herschel, 1,S22,327,000 



It appears, therefore, when we attempt a numerical verification, that 

 the distance of Mercury according to Bode''s law, exceeds its true dis- 

 tance by more than one million two hundred thousand miles; whereas, 

 that of Venus, the next planet in the system falls short of the true dis- 

 tance two millions of miles. In some of the other planets, and espe- 

 cially in Saturn, a much greater discrepancy is found. 



2. The small size of the new planets has been regarded as strongly 

 favoring the hypothesis under consideration. To this it may be replied 

 that, according to the estimate of Schroeter, there is much less dispro- 

 portion between the magnitudes of Juno, Ceres, and Pallas, and their 

 interior planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars, than between these 

 and the larger planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel. | 



3. It has been asserted that these planets are not spherical, like the 

 other bodies of the system, but of an irregular shape, as might naturally 

 be expected in the case of their being fragments of a larger planet. 

 This irregularity, however, is not discovered by actual observations on 

 the bodies themselves, but only inferred from the sudden diminution of 

 their light, when, as is supposed, their angular faces are towards us. 

 This phenomenon will doubtless admit of a different and more probable 

 explanation. But for a pre-conceived notion in regard to the origin of 

 these bodies, their globular form would perhaps never have been called 

 in question. 



If the Asteroids are "the ruins of a shattered world," the catastro- 

 phe which produced their avulsion must confessedly have occurred an- 

 terior to all history ; since no astronomical records furnish any evidence 



* Average mean distance. 



t Dr. Dick considers the estimates which have been made of the magnitude of 

 Vesta entirely too small, and infers from the fact of its having been seen by the 

 naked eye, that its diameter cannot be less than 1200 miles. 



