but that at the formation of all some common principle presided, apportioning the aggregations to their proper place. But it is such fine print of the system's history as at present to preclude discernment.
So much for the details we may deduce of the method of our birth. We perceive unmistakably that our solar system grew to be what it is, and that it developed by agglomeration of its previously shattered fragments into the planets we behold to-day, but exactly how the process progressed we are as yet unable to precise. We are, however, as what I have mentioned and tabled show, every day accumulating data which will enable an eventual determination probably to be reached.
From the fact of agglomeration, the essence of the affair, we turn to the traces it has left upon its several offspring.
Just as the continued existence to-day of meteorites in statu quo informs us of a previous body from which our nebula sprang; so a physical characteristic of our own earth at the present time shows it to have evolved from that nebula—even though we cannot make out all the steps. Of its having done so, we are far more sure than of how it did.
That primitive man perceived that somewhere below him was a fiery region which was not an agreeable abode, is plain from his consigning to such Tophet those whose religious tenets did not square with his
