D. Trowbridge on the Nebular Hypothesis. 29 
time of the breaking-up of the rings, owing to the action of the 
great disturbing forces to which their motions would be subject, 
to be projected to a considerable distance from either the outer 
or the inner parts of the rings, and such detached portions 
might never return to the parent masses, but would move around 
the central solar body in an elliptical orbit, having, perhaps, in 
some cases, considerable inclination to the plane of the equator 
of the rings from which they were projected. Such bodies 
would revolve around the sun as Comets. The theory of Central 
Forces” shows us that, when the distances from the central body 
md May we not in this way account for the existence of meteoric rings} 
See Math. Monthly, ii, 160. 
