one about the other, equal to those whose respective movements Herschel has already considered. Such are, further, the 61st of the Swan and its following one in which Bessel has just recognized particular movements so considerable and so little different that the proximity of these stars to one another and their movement about the common centre of gravity ought to leave no doubt. Thus one descends by degrees from the condensation of nebulous matter to the consideration of the sun surrounded formerly by a vast atmosphere, a consideration to which one repasses, as has been seen, by the examination of the phenomena of the solar system. A case so remarkable gives to the existence of this anterior state of the sun a probability strongly approaching certainty.
But how has the solar atmosphere determined the movements of rotation and revolution of the planets and the satellites? If these bodies had penetrated deeply the atmosphere its resistance would have caused them to fall upon the sun; one is then led to believe with much probability that the planets have been formed at the successive limits of the solar atmosphere which, contracting by the cold, ought to have abandoned in the plane of its equator zones of vapors which the mutual attraction of their molecules has changed into
divers spheroids. The satellites have been similarly formed by the atmospheres of their respective planets.
I have developed at length in my Exposition of the System of the World this hypothesis, which appears to me to satisfy all the phenomena which this system presents us. I shall content myself here with considering that the angular velocity of rotation of the sun and the planets being accelerated by the successive condensation of their atmospheres at their surfaces, it ought to surpass the angular velocity of revolution of the nearest bodies which revolve about them. Observation has indeed confirmed this with regard to the planets and satellites, and even in ratio to the ring of Saturn, the duration of whose revolution is .438 days, while the duration of the rotation of Saturn is .427 days.