80 Cincinnati Society of Natural History 



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A later view, and one which from its boldness and originalitf 

 has attracted much attention, has been promulgated by the English 

 astronomer, Norman Lockyer. His theory refers us back to the 

 origin of worlds and deals in a new way with the nebular hypothesis. 

 The nebulous material was supposed by La Place to consist of 

 highly attenuated incandescent gas. Lockyer substitutes for this 

 gas an infinite number of small meteorites. 



These meteorites are supposed to have been at one time sparsely 

 spread out into vast nebulous, and perhaps invisible clouds, slowly- 

 drifting through space. 



These clouds are in some cases immense celestial fields, much 

 larger than the entire space occupied by our solar system. 



Gradually their mutual attraction causes the meteorites to approach 

 each other and form centers or nuclei of condensation, and frequent 

 collisions of the meteoric particles begin to take place. As the 

 process of condensation proceeds with increasing vigor, so the 

 velocities of the meteorites increase in a corresponding ratio, and 

 the collisions become more frequent and more violent. These 

 collisions produce heat not only, but actually fuse and render 

 incandescent the substances of which the meteorites are composed 



Now imagine that such a center, in which condensation of 



