haps, was
too short to give us direct evidence of any distinct stages of so
august a process, still the probability was great that the nebular
hypothesis, especially in the more precise form given to it by Roche,
did represent broadly, notwithstanding some difficulties, the
succession of events through which the sun and planets had passed.

[Illustration: DR. WILLIAM HUGGINS, D.C.L., LL.D., PRESIDENT OF THE
BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

Dr. Huggins is one of the most eminent astronomers of the present day,
and his spectroscopic researches on the celestial bodies have had the
most important results. He is a D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Cambridge,
and Ph.D of Leyden. Dr. Huggins was born in 1824 and educated at the
City of London School. He continued his studies, giving much of his
time to experiments in natural philosophy and physical science. In
1855 Dr. Huggins erected a private observatory at his residence on
Tulse Hill, where he has carried out valuable prismatic researches
with the spectroscope.--_Daily Graphic._]

OTHER SPECULATIONS.

The nebular hypothesis of Laplace required a rotating mass of fluid
which at successive epochs became unstable from excess of motion, and
left behind rings, or more probably, perhaps, lumps, of matter from
the equatorial regions. To some thinkers was suggested a different
view of things, according to which it was not necessary to suppose
that one part of the system gravitationally supported another. The
whole might consist of a congeries of discrete bodies, even if these
bodies were the ultimate molecules of matter. The planets might have
been formed by the gradual accretion of such discrete bodies. On the
view that the material of the condensing solar system consisted of
separate particles or masses, we had no longer the fluid pressure
which was an essential part of Laplace's theory. Faye, in his theory
of evolution from meteorites, had to throw over his fundamental idea
of the nebular hypothesis, and formulated instead a different
succession of events of which the outer planets were formed last, a
theory which had difficulties of its own. Professor George Darwin had
recently shown, from an investigation of the mechanical conditions of
a swarm of meteorites, that on certain assumptions a meteoric swarm
might behave as a coarse gas, and in this way bring back the fluid
pressure exercised by one part of the system on the other, which was
required by Laplace's theory. One chief assumption