214 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



tive tendency which observation reveals to be natural 

 with him, and perhaps with stars generally. When the 

 distance between them was still great, the tides, he 

 opines, were necessarily feeble and the eruptive stimulus 

 correspondingly faint ; but later on, as the point of peri- 

 helion was neared, the tides increased to a high level and 

 the accompanying eruptions became commensurately 

 more terrific in their intensity, causing the sun to shoot 

 out great bolts of viscous matter through the tidal cones 

 located at the opposite ends of his diameter. While these 

 bolts were thus in the act of rising, or hung suspended in 

 space at heights ranging from zero to some three billions 

 of miles (Neptune's orbit), they were drawn forward by 

 the attraction of the passing star. Such matter as for 

 any reason was deflected only slightly in this manner fell 

 back to the sun on about the same spot whence it had is- 

 sued ; other matter being drawn forward somewhat more 

 strongly, fell back also, but angularly, giving, as it were, 

 a fillip to the sun, thereby starting or accelerating his 

 axial rotation ; while the great bulk of the matter was 

 pulled forward with sufficient force to lift it into orbital 

 paths more or less elliptical. Once given such motion, 

 under Newtonian interpretation, they would retain it 

 permanently, and in the course of time the larger nuclei, 

 which would inevitably have resulted, would aggregate 

 to themselves the minute particles, or " plane tesimals." 



Doctor Chamberlin recognizes that, in the first in- 

 stance, all the orbits would probably be very elliptical, 

 but opines that a composite of many of them ( a condi- 

 tion which would eventually be brought about by a mul- 

 tiiplicity of collisions) would no doubt prove more nearly 

 circular. Hence it is, he says, that the orbits of the plan- 

 ets are only slightly eccentric, whereas those of the as- 

 teroids, which have (because of their smalliiess) experi- 

 enced only relatively few collisions, are quite capricious 

 and, as further corroboration, he points to the fact that 

 Mercury and Mars, the smallest among the planets, have 

 the most eccentric orbits of all. Proceeding further, 

 Doctor Chamberlin argues that, besides thus accounting 

 for the circularity of the orbits of the planets, the plan- 



