creation. He supposes the void of nature to have been originally filled
with a universal FIRE MIST (p. 30), out of which all the celestial orbs
were made and put in motion. How this mist was put in activity, and
resolved into the luminous and revolving bodies that we now see, and one
of which we inhabit is the first urgent perplexity to surmount in the
conjecture. It is manifest that if a mist filled the entire region of
space, a mist it must for ever remain, unless acted upon by some cause
adequate to give it new action and arrangement. No sun, no stars or
planets could spontaneously emanate from an inert vapour any more than
from nothing. To meet this, his first difficulty, the author supposes
that there were certain _nuclei_, or centres of greater condensation,
analogous to those still remarked in the nebulæ of the heavens, and that
these nuclei, by their superior attractive force, consolidated into
spheres the gaseous matter around them:--

"Of nebulous matter," says he, "in its original state we know too
little to enable us to suggest _how nuclei should be established in
it_. But supposing that from a _peculiarity_ in the constitution
nuclei are formed, we know very well how, by the power of
gravitation, the process of an aggregation of the neighbouring
matter to these nuclei should proceed until masses more or less
solid should be detached from the rest. It is a _well-known law in
physics, that when fluid matter collects towards, or meets in a
centre, it establishes a rotatory motion_. See minor results of
this law in the whirlpool and the whirlwind--nay, on so humble a
scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a funnel. It
thus becomes certain, that when we arrive at the stage of a
nebulous star we have a rotation on its axis commenced."

Up to this, however, the author has proved nothing. The existence of the