SEGEEGATED MASSES. SI 



It is easy to conceive that the annular masses, being not 

 only internally active, but penetrated in various directions by 

 the refracted emanations from the central sun, would be 

 liable to be rarefied at particular points and condensed at 

 others, and- thus to be shrunken and cleft apart, at particular 

 lines and angles, and that by inherent action of the particles 

 of the rings themselves, contraction would take place from 

 these lines of cleavage, and that the materials previously 

 united, would thus be segregated into separate masses. These 

 masses would, on the same principle, be liable to be sub- 

 divided into inferior masses of greater or less number, in 

 proportion to their respective original magnitudes. This 

 whole process of segregation or fragmentation, is faintly 

 illustrated by the breaking up of the clouds after a storm, and 

 their resolution into separate masses. 



According to principles before explained, each general 

 mass, owing to its particles gravitating to a common center 

 within itself, would assume a general rotatory motion which, 

 for reasons which mathematicians will readily conceive, would 

 necessarily conform in its direction to the revolution of the 

 great ring of mundane materials to which it belonged, and 

 each sub-mass would have a particular rotating motion of its 

 own, which would conform to the motion of the general mass 

 to which it belonged, i. e., supposing that there were not in 

 either case any particular or incidental causes of disturbance. 

 Thus general masses and their included ^6-masses, with their 

 general and particular centers of gravitation and revolution, 

 would, by further progression, form general stellar systems, 

 and their included sub-systems, and finally, also, systems of 

 planets and satellites, all of which latter would be evolved by 

 the progressive unfoldings of the same principles heretofore ex- 

 plained as governing the formation of the universal structure. 



