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extent for the source of the cosmical masses of which h& 
treats. What is mainly worthy of notice is their character, of 
carriers of the faculty of organization, which he attributes to them. 
In the chapter intituled “ Principe d’apres lequel le premier 
developpement de notre globe peut s’etre effectue ? ” he writes r 
“ It may be a matter of curiosity, but it is in nowise necessary, 
that we should know on what principle or from what organized 
body the great mass of our globe has been derived ; it is suffi- 
cient for us that we exist in a manner where everything is per- 
fectly organized, at least in so far as the aim of our existence 
is concerned. Many scientific men have exercised their imagi- 
nation on this problem without being able to come to any 
definite decision. Some maintain that the nucleus of our globe 
was a fragment of a body which in its cosmical path had dashed 
itself into fragments against the sun, which the very close prox- 
imity of some comet to that star gives grounds for believing. 
Others suppose us to be a vast aerolite thrown off from the sun 
himself* with a force proportional to its mass, to a zone where 
the motion is determined in accordance with the laws of recip- 
rocal attraction, and that this fragment carried in itself the 
germ of all that organization which we see around us, and of 
which we form a part. ( Que cet eclat portait en lui le germe 
de toute cette organisation que nous observons id et dont 
nous faisons partie .) They suppose the satellites to be small 
parts or fragments detached from the chief mass by the violence 
of the rotation at the time it is hurled forth, or by the exces- 
sively high original temperature, increased by the fall, which 
produced a very violent dilatation of the matter, and severed 
some portions from it. These aerolites, it is said, by way of 
comparison, contain within them the principle common to the 
body whence they have been derived, just as a grain of seed 
carried by the wind is able to produce at a remote distance a 
tree like its prototype, with such modifications only as are due 
to soil or climate.” 
In the spring of 1871 Professor Helmholtz delivered at 
Heidelberg and at Cologne a discourse on the origin of "'the 
solar system, which he printed in the third collection of his 
interesting 66 Populare wissenschaftliche Vortrage,” published 
last year.f He directed attention on that occasion to the facts 
that meteorites sometimes contain compounds of carbon and 
hydrogen, and that the light emitted by the head of a comet 
gives a spectrum which bears the closest resemblance to that 
* 
* He alludes here in a note to the theory held by Laplace and others. 
t “Populare wissenschaftliche Vortrage. Von H. Helmholtz.” Braun- 
schweig : Vieweg und Sohn. 1878. Drittes Heft. p. 135. 
