3io THE WORLD MACHINE 



And this is a good deal the appearance which the asteroids, as 

 Herschel named them, present. 



The evidence in favour of this theory would be a great deal 

 stronger if it were found that the asteroids pass successively 

 through some common point in their closely associated orbits ; 

 but that is what they do not seem to do. The zone in which 

 they swing, this cinder-path of the solar system, is as broad 

 as the distance from the earth to the sun ; their orbits are 

 tilted to the ecliptic at all sorts of angles ; they are the most 

 eccentric of planetary bodies. One of them comes nearer to 

 the earth at times than any other body but the moon. 



It seems likely that there was no " shattered planet," and 

 that these small shot of the system are more probably a kind 

 of sputter in the moulding of our solar world. If our system 

 was formed through the coalescence of a succession of rings 

 like those of Saturn, sloughed off successively from a great 

 revolving pre-solar nebula, the formation of the vast mass of 

 Jupiter might explain the asteroids. Its enormous bulk would 

 exercise a disrupting influence, perhaps, upon a neighbouring 

 planetary foetus, if we may conceive that such ever existed, 

 and little by little what might have grown into an adult planet 

 was pulled apart to form a crowd of dwarfs. 



However this may be, the Keplerian gap was in a measure 

 filled ; the law of Bode seemed established. There did seem a 

 discernible order in the arrangement of the planets. The new 

 evidence in its favour was hardly more than presented than yet 

 another discovery came which brought more of difficulty than 

 the previous one had brought of aid. 



Interesting and even exciting as was the discovery of the first 

 new planet, that of Uranus, it none the less brought trouble. 

 For a time it seemed as if it could not be brought into agree- 

 ment with the hard- won laws of planetary motion. It was very 

 soon found that the planet had evidently been observed, though 

 not recognised, nearly a century before ; the more carefully 

 its motions were followed, and plotted, the more clear did it 

 become that it did not fit with exactitude into the Keplerian- 

 Newtonian scheme. The types of minds which discover a curious 

 delight whenever the marching intellect of the race strikes a 

 stumbling-block were offered a temporary joy. Perhaps the 

 laws of gravitation were not universally true, and there might 

 still be room in the world for that hodge-podge caprice which 



