THE PKIME RESULTANT 81 



face of it, is sound and legitimate, and deserves a cate- 

 gorical answer. Let it be premised, however, that the 

 only planet enough like our earth in constitution to serve 

 for a criterion, to-wit, Mars, points its axis so nearly like 

 the earth's that Doctor Lowell, late director of the Flag- 

 staff Observatory, in a bulletin issued shortly before his 

 death, asserted that its inclination is identically that of 

 the earth's. Why this remarkable coincidence? Shall 

 it be waved aside as immaterial? Moreover, Saturn's 

 axial inclination is given by Flammarion as 25 42' as 

 against 23 27' for the earth. Close enough surely to 

 constitute a prima- facie case ! As far as the definite ex- 

 ceptions of the sun and Jupiter are concerned, I might 

 put astronomers in general on the defensive by saying, 

 truthfully, that Newtonian theory doesn't account for the 

 direction of even a single one of these axes, let alone for 

 these three amazing coincidences. But I will not thus 

 evade the question. 



When you look at the earth, you see its crust ; when 

 you look at the sun or Jupiter, you see only their atmos- 

 pheres, or, at least, fluid envelopes. You cannot, there- 

 fore, predicate with the same positiveness with respect 

 to the hidden axial inclinations of these as you can with 

 regard to the plainly visible ones of Mars and the earth. 

 In the case of the earth, its interior (at least relatively to 

 the interiors of Jupiter and the sun) is solidified, and in- 

 capable of free movement, so that her ballasting adjust- 

 ments are confined, perhaps exclusively, to the surface, 

 where they can be duly interpreted ; whereas the sun, and, 

 in all likelihood, Jupiter, also, are molten throughout, so 

 that their ballasting process may go on inside, secretly, 

 leaving their mobile surfaces freely open to centrifugal 

 balancing. The force of this explanation is strengthened 

 by the established fact that both these huge bodies exhibit 

 the singular phenomenon of "equatorial acceleration"; 

 that is, the rotation of neither is uniform from pole to 

 pole, but is faster at the equator than in the latitudes. 



You may ask me why the solar system rotates on its 

 axis from west to east instead of just the reverse. I do 

 not know, any more than I know why the water in the 



