cometic
constitution now insisted on. And sometimes there would be like
accompaniments to meteoric streams.

See, then, the contrast between the two hypotheses. That of Laplace,
looking probable while there were only four planetoids, but decreasing
in apparent likelihood as the planetoids increase in number, until, as
they pass through the hundreds on their way to the thousands, it becomes
obviously improbable, is, at the same time, otherwise objectionable. It
pre-supposes a nebulous ring of a width so enormous that it would have
overlapped the ring of Mars. This ring would have had differences
between the angular velocities of its parts quite inconsistent with the
Nebular Hypothesis. The average eccentricities of the orbits of its
parts must have differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits; and the
average inclinations of the orbits of its parts must similarly have
differed greatly from those of adjacent orbits. Once more, the orbits of
its parts, confusedly interspersed, must have had varieties of
eccentricity and inclination unaccountable in portions of the same
nebulous ring; and, during concentration into planetoids, each must have
had to maintain its course while struggling through the assemblage of
other small nebulous masses, severally moving in ways unlike its own. On
the other hand, the hypothesis of an exploded planet is supported by
every increase in the number of planetoids discovered; by the greater
numbers of the smaller sizes; by the thicker clustering near the
inferred place of the missing planet; by the occurrence of the greatest
mean distances among the smallest members of the assemblage; by the
occurrence of the greatest eccentricities in the orbits of these
smallest members; and by the entanglement of all the orbits. Further
support for the hypothesis is yielded by aerolites, so various in their
kinds, but all suggestive of a planet's crust; by the streams of
shooting stars having their radiant points variously placed in the
heavens; and also by the solitary shooting stars visible to the naked
eye, and the more numerous ones visible through telescopes. Once more,
it harmonizes with the discovery of a family of comets, twelve out of
thirteen of which have mean distances falling within the zone of the
planetoids, have similarly associated periods, have all the same direct
motions, and are connected with swarms of meteors and with meteoric
streams. May we not, indeed, say, that if there once existed