SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



135 



impact would be a grazing one, when 

 three bodies would be produced; a por- 

 tion, or slice, as the author calls it, of 

 each of the colliding bodies would be 

 sheared off, forming an intensely hot 

 and bright new star, while the original 

 masses would go on their course, having 

 the parts that had been in contact 

 heated and made brilliant, so as to pre- 

 sent in their revolutions the aspect of 

 variable stars. The author's attention 

 was drawn to this subject by the ap- 

 pearance of a new star in Cygnus in 

 1877. A little while afterward Nova 

 Aurigae appeared, presenting exactly 



the phenomena he had predicted. Pro- 

 fessor Bickerton writes as one who un- 

 derstands his subject; there is nothing 

 in his speculations, so far as we have ob- 

 served, that grates harshly with known 

 facts, and it can be read, as he reads 

 it, to account plausibly for some of the 

 facts just as can several other theories 

 of the formation of the universe which 

 are still only speculations. The problem 

 is yet far from comprehension, and is one 

 of the legacies which the nineteenth cen- 

 tury is destined to bequeath to the 

 twentieth. (Published at Christ Church, 

 New Zealand.) 



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