April 1, 1867. 
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE E ART FI. 
By J. Carpenter, F.R.A.S., of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. 
HE Mosaic record of the 
Creation tells of the period 
when “ the earth was with- 
out form and void.” With- 
out this authoritative testi- 
mony, the evidence of our 
senses alone would lead us 
to the conviction that the 
materials of which the world 
is composed must have ex- 
isted, at some time, in a form different from that in 
which we now find them. In the smaller pheno- 
mena of nature we are for ever witnessing a constant 
succession of changes taking place — a perpetual 
mutation in form and nature occurring in the same 
material substances. All is transitory, nothing is 
Unite. Everything that is has already existed in 
some other form before, and will exist in yet another 
form again. The operations of natural laws vary 
quantitatively, but not qualitatively; and if the law 
of transformation governs the lesser works of the 
Creator it governs the greater also : the earth, like 
every object that exists upon it, must have had an 
origin from some simpler and more elementary 
form of matter. Guided by the light of modern 
science, let us endeavour to discover what that 
origin was. 
Our earth is but a small and insignificant member 
of a vast planetary system, all the components of 
which must have had a common or a contempo- 
raneous origin : to inquire into the origin of the 
earth we must embrace in our inquiry the 
formation of the whole solar system. The first 
physicist who attempted a solution of this question 
was the celebrated French naturalist, Buffon : 
although several romantic theories for the for- 
mation of the earth alone had been put forth by 
the fantastic cosmogonists, Burnet, Whiston, and 
Woodward. These, however, scarcely need mention 
here : as much as is worth knowing concerning 
them is to be found in popular shape in Goldsmith’s 
“ History of the Earth and Animated Nature.” 
Buffon’s hypothesis supposed that the sun existed 
at some period of remote antiquity without any 
attendant planets, and that a comet, dashing 
obliquely upon it, ploughed up and drove off a 
portion of the solar matter sufficient in bulk to 
VOL. II. XI. 
form the various planets of the system : that the 
earth and planets at the time of their quitting the 
sun were in a liquid, burning state, and that by 
degrees they cooled ; while in their liquid state 
assuming their spherical form. But this hypo- 
thesis is in many respects untenable ; principally, 
because it assumes the sun to be already existent, 
whereas any explanation of the origin of the solar 
system must include that of the principal member ; 
secondly, because it is insufficient to explain the 
mechanical conditions of the system. The theory, 
however, deserves notice, as having induced inquiry 
into one more probable. 
Kepler, and others among the early astro- 
nomers, imagined that the sun and stars — the suns 
of distant worlds — had been formed by the con- 
densation of celestial vapours : Kepler basing his 
supposition upon the phenomena of the sudden 
bursting forth of new stars upon the margin of the 
milky way — the only celestial appearance then 
known which seemed to be of vapoury nature. 
But when the telescope fathomed the depths of 
celestial space and revealed to our knowledge the 
existence of those mysterious patches of hazy 
luminosity that received the name of nebulai , 
strong evidence was afforded of the possible 
validity of the old astronomer’s supposition. It 
may be necessary to inform those who are un- 
initiated in the details of celestial nature that these 
nebulae are faint patches of diffused light which 
abound in great numbers all over the heavens ; 
assuming an infinite variety of form, and looking 
like little wisps or spots of thin cloud, or fog, in 
the field of the telescope. The earliest telescopes 
served to discover but a very few of them : it was 
only when the immense and powerful instruments 
of the elder Herschel swept every nook and corner, 
as it were, of the heavens with their stupendous 
eyes, that their exceeding abundance came to be 
recognised. This giant among observers found no 
less than 2,500 of such nebulae, and yet he over- 
looked the thousands that have been detected by 
various subsequent astronomers. 
During the earlier course of his nebular re- 
searches, Sir William Herschel appears to have 
inclined to the opinion that all nebulae were in 
reality remote clusters of stars, so remote and so 
h 
