Several days had passed; the sky was gray; the young people
assembled round the table; they were at no loss for a subject of
conversation. All those who have brothers or sons who study well,
have remarked how much they are especially fascinated by the
lectures on natural philosophy and astronomy; the world, as it
were, expands itself before the intellectual eye. We know that the
friends, during the past summer, had participated in these
lectures, and, like the greater number, were full of these
subjects, from the contemplation of a drop of water, with its
innumerable animalculae, to the distance and magnitude of stars and
planets.

To most of us these are well-known doctrines; to the ladies, also,
this was nothing entirely new: nevertheless, it interested them;
perhaps partly owing to Otto's beautiful eloquence. The gray, rainy
weather led the conversation to the physical explanation of the
origin of our globe, as the friends, from Orsted's lectures,
conceived it to have been.

"The Northern and Grecian myths agree also with it!" sail Otto. "We
must imagine, that in infinite space there floated an eternal,
unending mist, in which lay a power of attraction. The mist
condensed itself now to one drop--our globe was one enormous egg-shaped
drop; light and warmth operated upon this huge world egg, and hatched,
not alone ONE creature, but millions. These must die and give way
to new ones, but their corpses fell as dust to the centre: this
grew; the water itself condensed, and soon arose a point above
the expanse of ocean. The warmth of the sun developed moss and
plants; fresh islands presented themselves; for centuries did a
more powerful development and improvement show themselves, until