GATHERING WORLD STUFF. 213 



space around us well stocked with material particles. They 

 are not uniformly distributed; by their mutual attractions 

 they are gathered into swarms. The swarms are not motion- 

 less ; they are drawn toward every attracting body in the uni- 

 verse. They are not changeless; by degrees each swarm 

 grows as long as it has a separate existence, by the accession 

 of other swarms. As these swarms sail majestically through 

 the ocean of immensity, some are brought under the control 

 of distant suns, and start on long journeys to pay their flying 

 visits. They approach now as comets. If they are induced 

 to circle perpetually about given suns, they finally go to 

 pieces again, and the parts are either drawn to their central 

 suns, or distributed among the planets. If they escape from 

 the systems entered, they steady themselves across the gulfs of 

 space which separate systems, and in the progress of centuries, 

 float into other ports and new excitements. 



But some of these swarms remain floating in the depths of 

 extra-firmamental space, and gather to themselves, by their 

 increasing power of attraction, all other swarms and particles 

 from their region of immensity. They become Nebvlce. They 

 are luminous because pounded by the fall of other swarms, 

 and lighted by the collisions of their internal parts. They 

 are composed of matters solid, liquid, and gaseous. They 

 rotate. Poised in space, the impacts of gathering matters 

 have started them on their axes of motion. There they are 

 before our eyes. The background of the heavens is phos- 

 phorescent with the glow of these distant fields of world-stuff. 

 Each is a living picture of that primordial state in which we 

 fancy the matter of the solar system existed when that his- 

 tory of cooling began which we endeavored to trace to a 

 starting point. 



