456 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL VIII. 
or shorter duration as in sentient life, or it might have been continuous 
Without intermission for an indefinite time, or again, the whole family of 
worlds might have been produced at one birth, by one effective, tremen- 
dous cataclysm or convulsion. It matters little which method was followed. 
We may conclude that the world producing or child bearing age of the sun 
as in organic life would come to an end, soon after the maximum of heat 
and rotatory speed was passed, and the cooling process set in. 
Before this spectacular scene which I have been trying to depict fades 
away from your minds I wish to interject an idea which penetrated the 
grey matter of my brain a few weeks ago and persists in staying there. 
You have all no doubt heard of new stars, which appear to burst out at 
intervals, become intensely bright, and remain so for a few days or weeks 
or it may be sometimes, months, then gradually fade away again into ob- 
scurity or into a star of microscopic dimensions. What is the meaning of 
these strange phenomena? So far as my information goes they are sup- 
posed to be the result of collisions between two suns or other large bodies, 
which, through some mistake it would seem, among the telegraphers of the 
skies, have got into each other’s way and that great flash is the conse- 
quence of a terrible head-on, rear-end or broad-side smashing up. Some 
think they are due to spontaneous combustion. I confess that I was never 
quite satisfied with that explanation and really believe I have found a 
more rational as well as much more probable solution. Bearing in mind 
the unlimited number of nebule said to exist in interstellar space, and the 
highly probable theory that they are new worlds in the making, and ad- 
mitting the probability of the method or process I have endeavoured to 
unfold, can it be called unreasonable to suppose that the magnificent 
outburst of light accompanying such an outspreading of glowing matter 
ali round the circumference of such an immense body as it must have been 
would be amply sufficient to produce the phenomenae in question, 7. ¢., 
new star. I certainly and unreservedly think that it would, and the more 
I think the matter over, the more I am confirmed in that conclusion. 
The verification of this view would form a striking corroboration of the 
nebular theory, besides removing a clumsy precedent for all the careless 
blundering in our transportation systems on earth. 
To resume, we left our future sun busily engaged in distributing 
material for his great family of subordinate worlds out into cold space. 
Each block we may suppose received an impetus just sufficient to carry it 
to its appointed place. But long before it had reached its destination, 
it would have acquired a spherical form, and would be rotating in the same 
plane, or direction, as the body from which it was thrown. When the 
new globe now called a planet had reached to almost the limit of the cen- 
