THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 17 



searching for a planet to fill the blank. They were sure there 

 was one and so they mapped out that part of the heavens that 

 lay between Mars and Jupiter. Soon Piazzi discovered a star 

 behaving- like a planet in the constellation of Taurus, and the 

 astronomers gave out that their work was done and the law had 

 been satisfied the blank had been filled, but other planets were 

 soon discovered at about the same distance from the sun and 

 now about 425 are laid down in the star maps and just where 

 Bode's Law said they ought to be. Some are as small as 30 

 miles in diameter, the whole together would make a globe about 

 400 miles in diameter. Once it was thought they were frag- 

 ments of an exploded planet, but that they had been exploded 

 into more pieces than the asteroids. The masses of the planets 

 are very different and therefore the effect of gravity in bodies 

 at their surface is very unequal. Take for instance any of the 

 mimic worlds among the asteroids. Here is a little pellet of a 

 ^vorld 60 miles round, the force of gravity here is 400 times 

 more than on Vesta, in other words, what would weigh 400 

 lbs. here would weigh only i lb. on Vesta. If men are consti- 

 tuted there as we are here then twenty tons would be an easy 

 lift ; boys could play at marbles with immense boulders ; 3'oung 

 ladies could play tennis with rackets as large a^ a wall and with 

 balls as large as the dome of the Union Station, Toronto, and 

 in fact it could not be done otherwise for an ordinary tennis 

 ball struck on Vesta with moderate force would send it clear 

 off the planet and send it circling round it as a satellite. As 

 new asteroids are being discovered year by year, it may be that 

 they are creating them up at Pallas or Vesta by playing base 

 ball or tennis. If a man leaps up in the air in this earth he 

 would continue to ascend forever were it not that the attraction 

 of earth pulled him back. At Vesta leaping over a house 

 would be an easy exploit ; staircases might be abolished forever ; 

 a stout old lady could easily jump in a third story window ; a 

 summer zephyr would puff her over ; a moderate breeze would 

 lift her in its arms and carry her whirling down the street. To 

 counterbalance this and to enable men to have sufficient gravi- 

 tating power to stand and move they would need to be fifty 



