Bicxerton.—On the Genesis of Worlds and Systems. 187 
Art. XV.—On the Genesis of Worlds and Systems. By Prof. A. W. Bicker- 
TON, F.C.8., President of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury. 
(Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 3rd April, 1879.) * 
Arrer much consideration, I have decided to depart from the custom of 
giving a general view of the advance of science, feeling that the stupendous 
strides of the last few years are more fitting a course of lectures than a 
short address. I shall therefore devote the time at my disposal to one 
branch of science, viz., astronomy, which, from our occupying the southern 
portion of the globe, is one of the few physical sciences which possess local 
interest. 
A new country, with its strange fauna and flora, is the naturalist’s 
paradise. But the isolation, the want of differentiation in his studies and 
laboratory work, must ever render it a desert to the experimental physicist. 
The impossibility of ascertaining fully the progress of any branch of science 
by the few intellectual rays which reach so far from the focus of intelli- 
gence, will also tell in preventing much original research. But of course 
locally characteristic natural phenomena, if any exist, form an exception 
to this rule. This is the position of stellar astronomy: a circle of the 
heavens is hidden from the view of the great men of Europe, and, as it 
happens, a circle singularly rich in phenomena, containing, as it does, that 
magnificent region of the galaxy about the Southern Cross and the two 
Magellanic Clouds. 
-It is true that the harvest of this work was reaped by Herschel with his 
great reflector at the Cape. But there is still work for the gleaner, and in 
a large field of research it may be considered that his observations were only 
seed sown, the harvest of which may be reaped by future observers—I refer 
to all those phenomena in which the effect of time gives the chief interest. 
As the study of astronomy has thus an undoubted claim upon our con- 
sideration, I shall not apologize for offering to you a brief account of a new 
cosmical hypothesis which has occupied a considerable portion of the Society’s 
time lately. An hypothesis which appears to offer a possible explanation 
of many of the more peculiar among celestial phenomena. It certainly 
suggests many definite fields of astronomical research, the results of which, 
even if unfavourable to the hypothesis, cannot fail to be of value to science. 
To the mathematician, also, it offers many novel problems. In fact, if 
this theory should attract attention so far as to pass into that first stage of 
success as to be called fallacious in principle, impracticable in detail, and 
absurd on the face of it; or, better still, should it succeed so well as to pro- 
mote rational discussion worth answering, or obtain that highest eulogy the 
world knows how to give—of being discovered not to be new, it is probable 
* President’s Anniversary Address, ee 
