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5th March^ 1895. 



Joseph Wright, Esq., F.G.S., Vice-President in the Chair. 



William Redfern Kelly, Esq., gave a lecture on 



THE GREAT MYSTERY OF STELLAR AND 

 PLANETARY EVOLUTION. 



Mr. Redfern Kelly referred in his introductory remarks 

 to his subject as being most subtle and far-reaching in its 

 character, embracing as it did the origin and structure so 

 to speak of the illimitable universe, and premised that in 

 dealing with this abstruse question he would endeavour to 

 confine himself to those theories which are most generally 

 accepted by the leading astronomers and scientists of the 

 present day as to the evolution, under divine guidance, of 

 those myriads of suns and other innumerable worlds which 

 everywhere surround us, from such a nebulous condition of the 

 primordial, cosmical matter as that in which we now find it in 

 many thousands of mysterious celestial objects, which are for 

 the most part invisible to the human eye. One of the first 

 questions which would naturally suggest itself in considering 

 this complex problem would be : Have we any knowledge that 

 there exists in the vast universe any cosmical matter, in a 

 tenuous and diffused condition, from which the stellar or 

 planetary bodies (which we see around us in such profusion) 

 could be or might be evolved, and to what extent could the 

 evolution of these heavenly bodies be explained or accounted for 

 by the operation of any physical laws at present known to us ? 

 Long before the telescope had first brought to light the many 



