Prof. G. Tschermak on i 



would be a result ; the fragments would be sundered with 

 great violence, and would acquire velocities in several di 

 tions. The formation of meteorites may t: xplained ; 



we must, however. lose the fact that during 



a disruption I _ _ ill. would be pro- 



Mel re always small : nes. The 



j\vn ire die met Knyahinya. in the 



1a Collection, which weighs 2 s I the meteoric 



iron of Cranbournc. prei in the British Museum. 



_ 1 _. rhemar- gnitude ; 



and a stone of 5 kflog. !arge m< 



All these masses, even the largest, are but tiny 

 fine dust in comparison with nail planet of only a 



mile diam* r r. Were the latter divided into a million equal 

 them would be _ : ' . :' the 



Knyahin . and 10,000 times as b *ran- 



bourne meteoric i: 



It appears, the refo re, to be highly improbable that mete- 



-in to the disruption, by impact, of planetary 

 much more probable that a disintegration, even 

 to the smallest particles (what may be termed a pulverization^, 

 has been brought about by a force acting from within out- 

 wards — in short, by an explosion. 



losion is a violent pr ---. and may ap; .lash 



with our ideas of gradual development; yet it if 



more violent than the movem rved on the surf; 



son, or those of the - rved or calculated. 



The explosive upheavals on the sun - Z liner, 



Young, and Respighi. the as d -termined 



by Lockyer. proceed at far greater ve. ..an have 



been observed in the c * >f ten atrial explosions. 



-udden blazing-forth of certain stars is evic 

 of the activity of son vhich Mayer traced to the 



inmact of fixe union after fusion. The ema- 



nations observed in com- ^?hmidt take place with a 



vigour which also implies very rapid movement. The] 

 nothing in any of these phenomena at all at variance 

 the assumption of an explosion or pulverization rnical 



body. Whether the cosmical mass or : inch have fur- 



nished the m are to be ranked with the fixed 



of the heat dissipated, develop for each unit of w 



half the heat to be lost by radiation and con- 

 duction, and the specific neat of a re ^es as great 

 '--.- iJ m AaJ : v = 1 . i- \:i a U : mnrj om ate for the increase of 

 specific heat with the temperature and for the heat of fusion, the rise of 

 temperature would still be = _ . - 



