of the Solar System. 
1883.3 
67 
degree of probability ; do we succeed to foretell events, pro- 
bability increases to certainty. 
Since a comet was seen to divide, such possibility cannot 
be doubted. I have demonstrated which shape rotation gives 
to a spheroid. Let our Earth be carried nearer the Sun by 
great excentricity of orbit, this new excentricity must be 
connected with a process of dissolution and condensation 
different from the actual one. The distribution of surface 
in continents and seas is disturbed ; the earth alters the 
excentricity of its shape. As it gets nearer the sun, pressure, 
polar-ward undulation, condensation increases ; dissolution 
is likewise augmented, and with it the effect of centrifugal 
force which carries matter to the equator. Thus a tendency 
to more rapid and to slower rotation is developed, — a ten- 
dency of the one part to make the slower rotation more 
rapid, and of the other part to make the more rapid rotation 
slower. In this action and reaction of different strata the 
interior condenses, the exterior dissolves, the fluid increases, 
the interior still possesses part of acquired velocity of rota- 
tion, the fluid part undercuts the solid with its small axis, 
as if an increased retarding sea suddenly poured under and 
uplifted Asia, America, the whole solid surface, which 
pressing forward were thus together, and divided cast off by 
the nucleus, the boiling vapours rushing between. The dis- 
solved materials press each other, coagulate, surrounded by 
liquid and gas. 
I should try in vain to follow the process of planetary 
rupture in a descriptive manner. The enumeration of simple 
effe( 5 ts of gravity, the development of some proportions, is 
not only more demonstrative, but also more comprehensive, 
than to introduce gravity in all its multifarious metamor- 
phoses, — heat, magnetism, electricity, light, — which enliven 
the pidture, attract imagination, but prejudice intelligibility, 
and carry belief and disbelief with them. 
There exists in the planetary distances an interval which 
early and often attracted the attention of “ conjectural as- 
tronomy.” Examined more closely, indifferent if in conse- 
quence of an error in a star catalogue or of the intellectual 
motive of a fantastic hunt after law, it was found to embrace 
a host of planet dwarfs moving in intricate orbits. 
As there can be no certainty, d priori , we shall put down, 
without pretension to accuracy, the farther limit of the zone 
of the asteroids at 680 solar radii from the sun. Likely that 
we do not know all planets, but those largest in mass, and 
therewith the whole mass approximatively. Including some 
to be found, making another supposition, I put down the 
