THE GEOLOGIST. 



MARCH 1864. 



ON SPIRAL PLANETARY ORBITS AND THE PHYSICAL 

 EFFECTS OF A RETARDATION OF THE EARTH. 



By the Editor. 



When we see the untenable deductions to which even such an emi- 

 nent man as Professor Frankland is led, in his new glacial doctrines,* 

 by basing a meteorological hypothesis upon the unproven basis of a 

 central molten core in our planet, we cannot but be the more con- 

 vinced of the necessity of reconsidering the theories and hypotheses 

 which have been proposed to account for the origin and supposed 

 early conditions of our earth. We have been called upon by geolo- 

 gists to reject the Mosaic cosmogony because its statements were 

 not coincident with geological facts, and equally now are we called 

 upon to examine what those asserted geological facts are, and whe- 

 ther the asserted superior theories of geologists are substantially 

 correct, or whether they are one whit less mythical than the tradi- 

 tions of aboriginal peoples. 



Because men saw what through their telescopes looked like lumi- 

 nous clouds, the. elder Herschel and Laplace assumed the idea, still 

 later urged by Nichols, that these celestial nebulae were vast masses 

 of ethereal vapours condensing into stars. Modern telescopes, how- 

 ever, constantly being increased in size and power, have resolved one 

 after the other of these into wonderful star-systems — dust-clouds of 

 brilliant suns. And has not every one of these far distant stars 

 non-luminous planets and worlds rolling round it, as our earth and 

 * See Proceedings of Royal Institution, page 105. 



VOL. VII. M 



