milky zone, which surrounds us. He observes that in the vicinity of
these clusters of stars there are proportionally fewer stars than in
other parts of the heavens; and hence he concludes, that they have
attracted each other, on the supposition that infinite space was at
first equally sprinkled with them; as if it had at the beginning been
filled with a fluid mass, which had coagulated. Mr. Herschel has further
shewn, that the whole sidereal system is gradually moving round some
centre, which may be an opake mass of matter, Philos. Trans. V. LXXIV.
If all these Suns are moving round some great central body; they must
have had a projectile force, as well as a centripetal one; and may
thence be supposed to have emerged or been projected from the material,
where they were produced. We can have no idea of a natural power, which
could project a Sun out of Chaos, except by comparing it to the
explosions or earthquakes owing to the sudden evolution of aqueous or of
other more elastic vapours; of the power of which under immeasurable
degrees of heat, and compression, we are yet ignorant.

It may be objected, that if the stars had been projected from a Chaos by
explosions, that they must have returned again into it from the known
laws of gravitation; this however would not happen, if the whole of
Chaos, like grains of gunpowder, was exploded at the same time, and
dispersed through infinite space at once, or in quick succession, in
every possible direction. The same objection may be stated against the
possibility of the planets having been thrown from the sun by
explosions; and the secondary planets from the primary ones; which will
be spoken of more at large in the second Canto, but if the planets are
supposed to have been projected from their suns, and the secondary from
the primary ones, at the beginning of their course; they might be so
influenced or diverted by the attractions of the suns, or sun, in their
vicinity, as to prevent their tendency to return into the body, from