100 Proceedings of the British Association. 



Laplace, of which it is impossible to deny the ingenuity, of the succes- 

 sive abandonment of planetary rings, collecting themselves into planets 

 by a revolving mass, gardually shrinking in dimension by the loss of 

 heat, and finally concentrating itself into a sun, has been insisted on 

 with some pertinacity, and supposed to receive almost demonstrative 

 support from considerations to which I shall presently refer. I am 

 by no means disposed to quarrel with the nebulous hypothesis even 

 in this form, as a matter of pure speculation, and without any 

 reference to final causes ; but if it is to be regarded as a demonstrative 

 truth, or as receiving the smallest support from any observed numerical 

 relations which actually hold good among the elements of the planet- 

 ary orbits, I beg leave to demur. Assuredly, it receives no support 

 from observation of the effects of sidereal aggregation, as exemplified 

 in the formation of globular and elliptic clusters, supposing them to 

 have resulted from such aggregation. For were this the cause, work- 

 ing itself out in thousands of instances, it would have resulted, not in 

 the formation of a single large central body, surrounded by a few 

 much smaller attendants, disposed in one plane around it, — but in 

 systems of infinitely greater complexity, consisting of multitudes of 

 nearly equal luminaries, grouped together in a solid elliptic or 

 globular form. So far, then, as any conclusion from our observations 

 of nebulse can go, the result of agglomerative tendencies may, indeed, 

 be the formation of families of stars of a general and very striking 

 character ; but we see nothing to lead us to presume its further 

 result to be the surrounding of those stars with planetary attendants. 

 If, therefore, we go on to push its application to that extent, we 

 clearly theorize in advance of all inductive observation. 



But if we go still farther, as has been done in a philosophical 

 work of much mathematical pretension, which has lately come into a 

 good deal of notice in this conntry,* and attempt " to give a mathe- 

 matical consistency" to such a cosmogony by the "indispensable 

 criterion" of " a numerical verification," — and so exhibit, as l ' neces- 

 sary consequences of such a mode of formation," a series of numbers 

 which observation has established independent of any such hypo- 

 thesis, as primordial elements of our system — if, in pursuit of this 



* M. Cointe, Phil. Positive, ii. 376. 



