the knowledge increased in interest, when we consider the probability
of such being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and
the laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only to local
and accidental variations!

In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, our
attention is called in a special degree to the moon.

In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrown
off from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had previously
been from the sun. The orbit of any satellite is also to be regarded
as marking the bounds of the mass of the primary at the time when
that satellite was thrown off; its speed likewise denotes the
rapidity of the rotatory motion of the primary at that particular
juncture. For example, the outermost of the four satellites of
Jupiter revolves round his body at the distance of 1,180,582 miles,
shewing that the planet was once 3,675,501 miles in circumference,
instead of being, as now, only 89,170 miles in diameter. This large
mass took rather more than sixteen days six hours and a half (the
present revolutionary period of the outermost satellite) to rotate on
its axis. The innermost satellite must have been formed when the
planet was reduced to a circumference of 309,075 miles, and rotated
in about forty-two hours and a half.

From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the earth, at a
certain point of time after it was thrown off from the sun, was no
less than 482,000 miles in diameter, being sixty times what it has
since shrunk to. At that time, the mass must have taken rather more
than twenty-nine and a half days to rotate, (being the revolutionary
period of the moon,) instead of as now, rather less than twenty-four