140 On the Formation of the Universe. 
fluid or aerial; for, being destitute of an equilibrium, the 
mutual attraction of its parts would immediately have redu- 
ced it to a spherical figure. But suppose the matter con- 
tained in Saturn and its ring, when condensing from an ae- 
rial state, had been retained by the force of its satellites, in 
the form of a flat spheroid; it would gradually stiffen by the 
expulsion of light and heat,and most rapidly at the edge on 
account of its tenuity. Eventually the edge, by reason of 
its greater increase of density, and excess of velocity above 
what would keep a satellite at its distance from the centre, 
would be abandoned by the interior part of the wheel, and 
forma ring around it. The slender edge of the planet, as 
soon as released from its connexion with the ring, wou 
fall into the planet, and inevitably produce a depression 
about its equator. The planet being in a plastic state, could 
not restore itself to the form which it would naturally as- 
sume if it were fluid; so that it must still remain at least in 
some degree depressed about its equator. Such is Saturn’s 
form in reality. Astronomers have accounted for the forms 
of all the other bodies in the system, by the principles of 
gravitation. This stands a single anomaly, and by all the 
principles of gravitation and motion in which it is now con- 
cerned, it is wholly inexplicable. If we suppose half the 
quantity of matter contained in the ring of Saturn to be sol-. 
id, and perfectly regular, and the other half to be fluid, the 
parts having an attraction for each other, the lateral per- 
pendicular action of the solid part could do nothing to pre- 
vent accumulations from commencing, and when they had 
once commenced, they would unavoidably continue, till the 
whole would be collected together ; and the most of the 
solid part, being much more distant from the fluid parts, 
than the fluid parts from each other, its comparative action 
would of course be feeble. From this example it is easy 
for the mind to perceive, that however small the fluid part 
might be, it would have a similar tendency to accumulate in 
adegree proportioned toits quantity. If the ring, after its - 
formation, remained entirely regular, the least bias possible, 
as La Place has shown, wink destroy its es se and it 
would be only and inseparably attached to the planet. 
For if the planet P, fig. 3, receive a bias toward the parts 
the regular concentric ring m nr s, the parts m, n, 8, hav- 
ing the same force as s, could not by revolving change the 
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