79 



Solar and Planetary Evolution. 



chairman was present. In that, it was assumed that the mass, in 

 cooling by radiation, did so unevenly. Very many centers were 

 necessarily formed, evaporated, and reformed again and again. 

 Collision and crash among them brought about concentration of 

 many into few. A veritable struggle for existence went on, upon 

 a most gigantic scale, in which explosions, attractions and wrecks 

 of embryo worlds were the rule. Their centralization was not 

 upon a common plane, but in three directions, while the move- 

 ments were erratic in the extreme. The present directions and 

 modes of motion are the resultants of an incalculable number of 

 destroyed tangents. The planets and their satellites now existing 

 are in positions of harmonic adaptation. World-life began as pre- 

 cariously as animal life. The present perfected planetary exis- 

 tence is the outcome of a triumph over and adaptation with envir- 

 onment. All not in such positions, and with such motions of 

 adjustment, were dashed into meteors and star-dust or assimilated 

 as food by these. Gravity still continues to shower in upon the 

 survivors these remnants, to increase their volume. 



The late Richard A. Proctor had a theory of cosmic evolution 

 to which Mr. Serviss did not refer to-night. He held that planets 

 were all originally built up of meteors, and not of coalescing fluid 

 rings. The moon he believed to have been built up of fragments 

 originally cast from the earth. The sun's attraction, raising the 

 liquid mass as two great tides on opposite sides of the globe, con- 

 spired with the diurnal motion to project these in showers into 

 space. Final concentration around a common center gave us the 

 moon. The earth was born in a similar manner from the sun. As 

 multitudes of such pieces are still flying through space, all the 

 planets and even the sun himself are increasing in bulk by their 

 return to their parent masses. 



The doctrine of the degradation of energy enunciated by Mr. 

 Serviss has never seemed to me to be altogether a sound one. We 

 do not know the cause of gravity nor of affinity, and, until we do, 

 speculations of this kind, especially as they lead to such doleful 

 conclusions, should be curbed. Gravity itself may be a product 

 of the evolution of matter. So also may be chemical affinity. If 

 they developed pari passu with the fire-mist, the round of change 

 may break their links and set all primal substance free again. 

 The chilling process may, for anything we yet know to the con- 

 trary, bring on a rhythm in matter that will break cohesion, affinity 

 and gravity, releasing everything into the universal urstaff from 

 which the fire-mist was begotten. To believe that suns will co- 



