PROGRESSION OF FORMS. 83 



intermediate degrees of symmetry in shape, down to the per- 

 fectly globular shape, to which the prevailing forms of these 

 stellar masses manifest more or less approximation. Judging 

 from appearances, therefore, one would say that these masses 

 are evidently in all degrees of progression, between rudi- 

 mental and ultimate forms, and that, in general, those of the 

 most angular forms are the least, while those of the globular 

 form are the most, progressed.* This is all manifestly in 

 exact harmony with the hypothesis of nebular and angular 

 segregation, and subsequent firmamental, solar, and planetary 

 conglobation, which we have proposed. 



Moreover, these nebular or stellar masses, although they 

 appear in all directions in the heavens, are said to appear, as 

 already intimated, in greatest abundance in the direction of a 

 particular plane, which cuts the plane of our Milky Way at 

 right angles. In the direction, perpendicular to this plane, 

 they grow comparatively thin (as do the stars in the direction 



* In illustration of the progression from angularity and ellipticity to sphericity in 

 these bodies, I may quote the following from the splendid work of Sir John Herschel, 

 embodying the results of his observations at the Cape of Good Hope. With reference 

 to the engraved figures of two particular nebulae existing in the southern heavens, ho 

 says: "These figures exhibit elliptical nebulae, normal in their character that is to 

 say, in which, as the condensation increases toward the middle, the ellipticity of the 

 strata diminishes, or in which the interior and denser portions are obviously more 

 nearly spherical than the exterior and rarer. A great number of such nebulae, of every 

 variety of ellipticity and central condensation, are figured in my northern catalogue. 

 Kegarding the spherical as only a particular case of the elliptic form, and a stellar 

 nucleus as only the extreme stage of condensation, at least nine-tenths of the whole 

 nebulous contents of the heavens will be found to belong to this class ; so that, as 

 regards a law and a structure, the induction which refers them, as a class, to the 

 operation of similar causes, and assumes the prevalence within them, of similar 

 dynamical conditions, is most full and satisfactory. To abstain altogether from specu- 

 lation as to what may be the nature of those causes and conditions, and to refuse all 

 attempts to reconcile the phenomena of so large and so definite a class of cosmical 

 existences, with mechanical laws, taken in their most general acceptation, would be to 

 err on the side of excessive caution and philosophical timidity." HEBSCHEL'S Results 

 (tt tiM Cape of Good Hope, p. 22. 



