have formed several concentric rings like that of Saturn round the sun.
In their turn these rings of cosmic matter, seized with a movement of
rotation round the central mass, would have been broken up into
secondary nebulae--that is to say, into planets.

If the spectator had then concentrated all his attention on these
planets he would have seen them behave exactly like the sun and give
birth to one or more cosmic rings, origin of those secondary bodies
which we call satellites.

Thus in going up from the atom to the molecule, from the molecule to the
nebulae, and from the nebulae to the principal star, from the principal
star to the sun, from the sun to the planet, and from the planet to the
satellite, we have the whole series of transformations undergone by the
celestial powers from the first days of the universe.

The sun seems lost amidst the immensities of the stellar universe, and
yet it is related, by actual theories of science, to the nebula of the
Milky Way. Centre of a world, and small as it appears amidst the
ethereal regions, it is still enormous, for its size is 1,400,000 times
that of the earth. Around it gravitate eight planets, struck off from
its own mass in the first days of creation. These are, in proceeding
from the nearest to the most distant, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Between Mars and Jupiter circulate
regularly other smaller bodies, the wandering _débris_, perhaps, of a
star broken up into thousands of pieces, of which the telescope has
discovered eighty-two at present. Some of these asteroids are so small
that they could be walked round in a single day by going at a gymnastic
pace.