Woodside. 7 1 



of the freshness of spring! Our eyes go up to the great 

 vault above, and as we see a large hazy mass among the 

 brighter stars, and recognise it as a probable nebula, our 

 mind goes back to that time long, long ago, when 



" This world was once a fluid haze of light, 

 Till toward the centre set the starry tides 

 And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 

 The planets." 



Was ever a shorter and more definite account given of 

 the "nebular hypothesis"? Was it ever so briefly stated ? 

 Bit by bit our minds go back from the solid world on which 

 we stand, upward through the atmosphere which bathes it, 

 through the region of wind and cloud and mist, until we 

 reach 



"That lucid interspace of world and world, 

 Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind, 

 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 

 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 

 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 

 Their sacred everlasting calm." 



Yes, u an everlasting calm " runs upward and onward from 

 world to world. We think of those vast gaseous masses 

 slowly condensing, and in their revolution throwing off 

 masses of their own structure, and then holding them in 

 subjection by the law of gravity ; the change from gas to 

 liquid, from liquid to solid ; the quiet, slow, silent work of 

 the ages that followed, passes rapidly before our minds, and 

 then before us rises the picture when 



" This outworn earth shall be as dead as yon dead world 

 the moon." 



There is Jupiter, bright and clear ; there Saturn, with its 



