262 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



continue to increase, will become of huge magnitude \vhen the out- 

 side crust grows thick enough to form its own supporting arch, for 

 then the fused interior will recede, and form mighty vaults that will 

 engulf not the waters merely, but all the atmosphere likewise. 



At this stage the earth, according to M. St. Meunier, will be a 

 middle-aged world like the moon ; but as old age advances the con- 

 traction of the fluid, or viscous interior beneath the outside solid 

 crust will continue, and the rainures will extend in length and depth 

 and width, as he maintains they are now growing in the moon. 

 This, he says, must continue till the centre solidifies, and then these 

 cracks will reach that centre, and the world will be split through in 

 fragments corresponding to the different rainures. 



Thus we shall have a planet composed of several solid fragments 

 held together only by their mutual attractions, but the rotary move- 

 ment of these will, according to the French philosopher, become un- 

 equal, as *' the fragments present different densities, and are situated 

 at unequal distances from the centre ; some will be accelerated, 

 others retarded ; they will rub against each other, and grind away 

 those portions which have the weakest cohesion." The fragments 

 thus worn off will, " at the end of sufficient time, girdle with a com- 

 plete ring the central star." At this stage the fragments become real 

 meteors, and then perform all the meteoric functions excepting the 

 seed-carry ing of Sir W. Thomson. 



It would be an easy task to demolish these speculations, though 

 not within the space of one of my letters. A glance at the date of 

 this paper, and the state of Paris and the French mind at the time, 

 may, to some extent, explain the melancholy relish with which the 

 Parisian philosopher works out his doleful speculations. Had the 

 French army marched vigorously to Berlin, I doubt whether this 

 paper would ever have found its way into the " Comptes Eendus. " 

 After the fall of Paris, and the wholesale capitulation of the French- 

 armies, it was but natural that a patriotic Frenchman, howsoever 

 strong his philosophy, should speculate on the collapse of all the 

 stars, and the general Vinding-up of the universe. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE DYING TKEES IN" KENSINGTON GAEDENS. 



A GKEAT many trees have lately been cut down in Kensington Gar- 

 dens, and the subject was brought before the House of Commons, at 

 the latter part of its last session. In reply to Mr. Ritchie's question, 

 Mr. Adam, the then First Commissioner of Works, made explanations 

 which, so far as they go, are satisfactory but the distance is very 

 small. He states that all who have watched the trees must have seen 

 that their decay " has become rapid and decided in the last two 

 years, " that when the vote for the parks came on many " were either 

 dead or hopelessly dying, " that in the more thickly planted portions 

 of the gardens the trees were dead and dying by hundreds, owing to 

 the impoverished soil and the tenible neglect of timely thinning fift~ 

 or sixty years ago. 



