as the motion of a body revolving about a larger one by means of a central force. Perhaps the reader may understand what kind of adjustments these are, by supposing such a bowl and ball to be used for a game of skill. If the object of the players be to throw the pellet along the surface of the basin, so that after describing its curved path it shall pass through a small hole in a barrier at some distance from the starting point, it will easily be understood that some nicety in the regulation of the force and direction with which the ball is thrown will be necessary for success. In order to obtain a better image of the solar system, we must suppose the basin to be very large and the pellet very small. And it will easily be understood that as many pellets as there are planets might run round the bowl at the same time with different velocities. Such a contrivance might form a planetarium in which the mimic planets would be regulated by the laws of motion as the real planets are; instead of being carried by wires and wheels, as is done in such machines of the common construction and in this planetarium the tendency of the planets to the sun is replaced by the tendency of the representative pellets to run down the slope of the bowl. We shall refer again to this basin, thus representing the solar system with its loose planetary balls.

CHAPTER II.

The Circular Orbits of the Planets round the Sun.

THE orbit which the earth describes round the sun is very nearly a circle: the sun is about one thirtieth nearer to us in winter than in summer. This nearly circular form of the orbit, on a little consideration, will appear to be a remarkable circumstance.

Supposing the attraction of a planet towards the sun to exist, if the planet were put in motion in any part of the solar system, it would describe about the sun an orbit of some kind; it might be a long oval, or a shorter oval, or an exact circle. But if we suppose the result left to chance, the chances are infinitely against the last mentioned case. There is but one circle; there are an infinite number of ovals. Any original impulse would give some oval, but only one particular impulse, determinate in velocity and direction, will give a circle. If we suppose the planet to be originally projected, it must be projected perpendicularly to its distance from the sun, and with a certain precise velocity, in order that the motion may be circular.

In the basin to which we have compared the solar system, the adjustment requisite to produce circular motion would require us to project our

pellet so that after running half round the surface it should touch a point exactly at an equal distance from the centre, on the other side, passing neither too high nor too low. And the pellet, it may be observed, should be in size only one ten thousandth part of the distance from the centre, to make the dimensions correspond with the case of the earth's orbit. If the mark were set up and hit we should hardly attribute the result to chance. The earth's orbit, however, is not exactly a circle. The mark is not precisely a single point, but is a space of the breadth of one thirtieth of the distance from the centre. Still this is much too near an agreement with the circle to be considered as the work of chance. The chances were great against the ball passing so nearly at the same distance, for there were twenty-nine equal spaces through which it might have gone, between the mark and the centre, and an indefinite number outside the mark.

But it is not the earth's orbit alone which is nearly a circle: the rest of the planets also approach very nearly to that form: Venus more. nearly still than the earth: Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus have a difference of about one-tenth, between their greatest and least distances from the sun Mars has his extreme distances in the proportion of five to six nearly; and Mercury in the proportion of two to three. The last mentioned case is a considerable deviation, and two of the

small planets which lie between Mars and Jupiter, namely Juno and Pallas, exhibit an inequality somewhat greater still; but the smallness of these bodies, and other circumstances, make it probable that there may be particular causes for the exception in their case. The orbits of the satellites of the Earth, of Jupiter and of Saturn, are also nearly circular.

Taking the solar system altogether, the regularity of its structure is very remarkable. The diagram which represents the orbits of the planets might have consisted of a number of ovals, narrow and wide in all degrees, intersecting and interfering with each other in all directions. The diagram does consist, as all who have opened a book of astronomy know, of a set of figures which appear at first sight concentric circles, and which are very nearly so; no where approaching to any crossing or interfering, except in the case of the small planets, already noticed as irregular. No one, looking at this common diagram, can believe that the orbits were made to be so nearly circles by chance; any more than he can believe that a target, such as archers are accustomed to shoot at, was painted in concentric circles by the accidental dashes of a brush in the hands of a blind man.

The regularity, then, of the solar system excludes the notion of accident in the arrangement of the orbits of the planets. There must have been an express adjustment to produce this cir

cular character of the orbits. The velocity and direction of the motion of each planet must have been subject to some original regulation; or, as it is often expressed, the projectile force must have been accommodated to the centripetal force. This once done, the motion of each planet, taken by itself, would go on for ever still retaining its circular character, by the laws of motion.

If some original cause adjusted the orbits of the planets to their circular form and regular arrangement, we can hardly avoid including in our conception of this cause, the intention and will of a Creating Power. We shall consider this argument more fully in a succeeding chapter; only observing here, that the presiding Intelligence which has selected and combined the properties of the organic creation, so that they correspond so remarkably with the arbitrary quantities of the system of the universe, may readily be conceived also to have selected the arbitrary velocity and direction of each planet's motion, so that the adjustment should produce a close approximation to a circular motion.

We have argued here only from the regularity of the solar system; from the selection of the single symmetrical case and the rejection of all the unsymmetrical cases. But this subject may be considered in another point of view. The system thus selected is not only regular and symmetrical, but also it is, so far as we can