128 Mr. Brayley Inferences and Suggestions, 6,-c. [Mar. 23, 



It is next shown in the paper in what manner a nucleus of hypogene 

 rocks or plutonic granite supplying the materials for the subsequent depo- 

 sition of sedimentary strata, and also the chemical elements of organic 

 beings, would be one of the final results of the Earth's formation by the 

 coalescence of meteoritic masses. The chemical action of its primitive and 

 central heat, governed by the solar radiation upon the exterior of the new 

 planet, would initiate the cycle of correlate activities by which its perma- 

 nence would be secured. In addition to thus assigning a natural and 

 adequate cause for the secular invariability of the Earth's internal heat, 

 sometimes assumed as an axiom in geological speculations without being 

 accounted for, these suggestions may evince that, on the other hand, it is 

 unnecessary to regard tbe Earth as a cooling body. 



Admitting the Earth to have been formed as here suggested, such also 

 must have been the process of formation of the other Planets. 



A " Discrimination of these views in Gosmical Philosophy from those of 

 Mayer and his School " is here interposed. The induction by which the 

 original formation of the Earth and other Planets is arrived at in this paper 

 is new ; but from that point these views have a certain parallelism with those 

 founded on the " Celestial Dynamics " first enunciated by Mayer, for a 

 knowledge of which English scientific literature is chiefly indebted to the 

 zeal of Professor Tyndall. Of the Mayerian Theory that presented in 

 these "Inferences and Suggestions" is virtually in nearly every stage 

 the inversion, though not suggested by nor produced by inverting it, having 

 been founded on different data and arrived at by independent reasoning. 

 According to the physicists of the Mayerian school, the activities of 

 nature begin with the mutual attraction of " Cosmical Masses " of which 

 Meteorites are taken as examples*. In the theory now offered they 

 commence with Force and Heat and Light and Matter locally origi- 

 nating in the Sun. 



The " Theory of the Minor Planets " is next briefly considered. All the 

 phenomena they present are regarded as supporting the conclusion that 

 their peculiar relations and community of character are not, as hitherto 

 supposed, effects of their having formerly constituted one heavenly body 

 which has been reduced to fragments,- but of their being bodies intrin- 

 sically of the same nature, meteoritic masses in fact, in an advanced in- 

 termediate state between the condition of meteorites and that of true 

 planets, in process of gradual convergence towards each other, prepara- 

 tory to their coalescence into one greater planet. 



The last section relates to the " Projectile Power of the Sun," accounted 

 for in the section on the Spots, and by which meteoritic masses are conceived 

 to be transferred with great velocity to the interplanetary spaces. 



Everything here ascribed to the Sun is of course intended to apply in a 

 general manner to the Stars also, so far as our knowledge of them extends ; 

 agreeably to the primary cosmical truth that they are Suns, " which must 

 * Companion to the Almanac for 1865, pp. 41- 70. 



