698 T. C. CHAMBERLIN 



considerable distances against the feeble gravity of the head. By 

 collisions in the course of their flights, these develop a quasi- 

 gaseous meteoritic swarm whose triturative action should give rise 

 to products of dustlike fineness. Both of these processes would 

 doubtless be attended by much electrical dissociation in which 

 the negative electrons would escape and the positive remain 

 attached, so that electric repulsion would tend to drive both gases 

 and dust sunward until repellant action from the sun reversed the 

 movement and drove the whole backward in the form of the 

 comet's tail. This sketch is very inadequate, but it may serve to 

 suggest ways in which the distinctive features of comets may arise. 

 The nuclei of the comets' heads may be merely clouds or clustered 

 groups of meteorite-like masses loosely assembled by their own 

 feeble attractions, and so subject to easy deployment and reassem- 

 blage as conditions require. 



If the spectacular features of comets may thus be reduced to 

 the incidental effects of extremely elongated orbits, the way is 

 cleared for explaining how the material of the meteors, meteorites, 

 and comet-heads may have originated, how their highly elliptical 

 orbits were given them, and why these orbits lie in all azimuths 

 and the bodies in them revolve indifferently in forward and retro- 

 grade directions in contrast to the systematic, orderly, and con- 

 current habits of the planetary bodies. 



I. The first hypothesis assumes that, previous to the genesis 

 of the present planetary system, the sun had a system of second- 

 aries of the t3^e which it could generate without the co-operation of 

 any outside body. The assigned principles of such generation are 

 those rigorous deductions from the kinetic theory of gases on which 

 orbital ultra-atmospheres are postulated.' This class of second- 

 aries would be, in the nature of the case, of a very much smaller 

 order than our present planets. The orbits of such bodies would 

 be likely to be thrown into erratic courses by the near approach 

 of the massive body to which the origin of our present planetary 

 system is assigned. Such of these small bodies as were thrown 

 into very long elliptical orbits were made to suffer great extremes 

 of heat and cold and might thus, it is postulated, have taken on 



' "Celestial Kinships," The Origin of the Earth (1916), pp. 101-2. 



