We understand Laplace to have supposed the nebula to have been formed out of cosmic matter in its simplest condition, and in its most primitive atomic state, collected from enormously distant regions of space by the power or law of attraction. In this we shall follow him, because we do not see the necessity for matter having to be created in the form of meteorites or meteors, or any other form, to be afterwards dissociated and reduced to the atomic state, by heat produced by collisions amongst the dissociated atoms. Surely it would show more prescience, more simplicity of work, and economy of labour, to create matter in this primitive state, than in one which required it to be passed through a mill of some kind, as it were, before it was manufactured into nebulous matter; in fact, to make brickbats in order that they should be afterwards ground down—dissociated—into impalpable powder, to render them fit to be worked up into bricks. But our first effort will be to attempt to define the collecting grounds of this cosmic matter, somewhat more particularly than has been done hitherto, as we believe that even a superficial study of them will assist us greatly in forming a more comprehensive idea of the whole solar system than anything we have met with in any of the books which we have had the opportunity of applying to for information.

The collecting grounds, then, are clearly the whole region of space to which the attractive power of the sun extends, or what astronomers would call within the sphere of his attraction. These domains, like those of any other proprietor, are limited by the domains of his neighbours. At first sight, it would seem that his neighbours are infinite in number, but a little thought will show that the number may be very limited indeed. On this small earth of ours, it is a very common thing for a landed proprietor to be able to look over the domains of his neighbours, and see those of proprietors more remote; even to look over the domains of his neighbours' neighbours, and see properties so remote that he does not even know to whom they belong nor how they are named. With much more reason, the same must be the case with the sun, more especially as he, from his own mansion-house, sees nothing of the domains, but only the mansion-houses of others, there being no landmarks, hills, fences or woods to cut off his view, as there are upon the earth; the only interruption possible to his view being that another mansion-house should come to be exactly between his and that of a farther-off neighbour. For our purposes, we will assume that his nearest neighbours are those the distances of whose mansion-houses have been measured, and will adopt the following list of them, taken from Mr. George Chambers's "Hand-Book of Astronomy," part 3, page 10, 5th edition, 1889, and forming [Table VII]. All that we can learn from this table is that the boundary between the sun and any one of the stars mentioned in it must be somewhere on a straight line connecting the two, but that does not furnish us with any information as to the extent of the sun's domains, although it does help to give us some idea of their form. For some knowledge of their extent, we require to know how far the lordship of each one of the proprietors extends from his mansion-house; which, very much the same as it does upon the earth, depends upon the power he has to take and keep it; it depends on the mass of each neighbour who actually marches with the sun when compared with his own mass. The list referred to does not help us in any way to determine this, as we have just said, but we have found in Professor Charles A. Young's "Lessons in Astronomy," of 1891, page 270, the masses of six binary stars whose distances, calculated from the parallaxes given in it, furnish us with data from which we can calculate the distance from the sun of the boundary between him and any one of them. The number is very small, but still from them we can gain some notion of what was the form of the domains from which the original nebula was collected; that is, always under the supposition that the sun and his system were evolved from a nebula. From these data, [Table VIII]. has been drawn up, which shows the distances of the six stars from the sun, and the limits of his sphere of attraction in relation to them expressed in terms of radii of the earth's orbit, and also in radii of Neptune's orbit, which gives numbers more easily comprehended by us.

[TABLE VII].— List of Stars whose Distances from the Sun have been Measured, and which are assumed to be his nearest Neighbours.

Distance
Star.Magnitude.Proper
Motion.
( " )		Parallax
( " )		Sun's
Distance=1.		Time for
Light to
reach Earth.		Observers
α Centauri13.670.75275,000 4·34 Gill.
61 Cygni65·140·50412,500 6·51 O. Struve.
21185 Lalande7¼4·750·50412,500 6·51 Winnecke.
Sirius11·240·38543,000 8·57 Gill.
μ Cassiopeiæ——0·34606,000 9·57 O. Struve.
34 Groombridge82·810·29711,00011·23 Auwers.
9352 Lacaille7½6·950·28737,00011·62 Gill.
21258 Lalande8½4·400·26793,00012·52 Krüger.
Ö Arg. 1741591·270·25825,00013·02 Krüger.
σ Draconis51·870·25825,00013·02 Brunnow.
ε Indi5¼4·680·22938,00014·80 Gill.
α Lyræ10·310·201,031,00016·27 ——
ο2 Eridani4½4·100·171,213,00019·15 Gill.
ρ Ophiuchi4½1·000·171,213,00019·15 Krüger.
ε Eridani4½3·030·141,473,00023·24 Elkin.
ι Ursæ Majoris30·520·131,586,00025·04 C.A.F. Peters.
α Boötis12·430·131,586,00025·04 C.A.F. Peters.
γ Draconis20·060·092,292,00036·17 ——
1830 Groombridge77·7050·092,292,00036·17 Brunnow.
Polaris2—0·072,947,00046·50 C.A.F. Peters.
3077 Bradley62·090·072,947,00046·00 Brunnow.
ς Foucani62·050·063,438,00054·25 Elkin.
85 Pegasi61·380·054,125,00065·10 Brunnow.
α Aurigæ10·430·045,157,00081·37 C.A.F. Peters.
Canopus1—0·036,875,000108·50 Elkin.

[TABLE VIII].— Masses of a few Binary Stars showing the Limit of the Sun's Sphere of Attraction with respect to them, in Radii of the Earth's Orbit, and Distances of their Boundaries with the Sun in the same Measure, and also in Neptune Distances.

Name of Star.Parallax
( " )		Mass
Sun's
Mass=1.		Distance from Sun
in Earth Orbit radii
(93,000,000)
Miles.
Distance of Limit
of Sun's Sphere of
Attraction in
radii of Earth's
Orbit=1.
Distance of
Limit in radii of
Neptune's Orbit
=2,794,000,000
Miles.
α Centauri0·752·14275,000  128,505  4,277 
61 Cygni0·430·23479,686  369,358  12,294 
Sirius0·384·26543,000  127,465  4,243 
α Geminorum0·200·301,031,325  721,927  24,030 
70 Ophiuchi0·165·001,289,150  257,830  8,582 
η Cassiopeiæ0·153·001,375,100  458,366  15,257 

But there is still something to be said with respect to the Binary Stars of Table VIII., and any others whose masses may be met with later on. If those forming a pair revolve around each other, or a common centre, in orbits, it must happen that they will be sometimes more or less in conjunction, opposition, and quadrature with regard to the sun; also the angles of the planes of their orbits to direct lines between them and the sun, whatever these angles may be, will cause variations in the separate and combined forces of attraction they exercise in the domains of the sun, at different periods of their revolutions; so that these powers of attraction will be constantly increasing and diminishing, and causing the boundaries of their domains to approach and recede from the sun; thus introducing between their domains and those of the sun a debatable land, which will reduce celestial to be very much like terrestrial affairs, where each proprietor, or power, takes the pull when an opportunity presents itself. No doubt all such invasions, or claims, between proprietors will be settled by the law of attraction, without lawsuit, arbitration or conflict; but as law gives right, and might is right—most emphatically in this case—we come back to the old seesaw of earthly matters. Well, therefore, many astronomers teach that the whole universe is formed out of the same kind of materials, and governed by the same laws that we are having good reason to know something about on this earth of ours.

Accustomed to look upon α Centauri as the star nearest to us, on account of its light-distance being so much smaller than any other noted in our text-books, we were not prepared to find that, when measured by his sphere-of-attraction distance, Sirius is actually a rather nearer neighbour to the sun than it; nor that his, apparently, next nearest neighbour, when measured in the same way, is twice as far away as either of them; and thus we have the conviction thrust upon us that they must have made deep hollows in the solar nebula when it was being formed. On the other hand, when we think of three of the other stars mentioned in the list of six, being practically from three to six times farther off than either of them, we come to the conclusion that the form of the nebula, when in its most primitive state, must have been of a very jagged character; a conclusion which is very considerably strengthened when we look at [Table VII]., and see that the stars noted in it run up to from twice to not far from thirty times more distant from the sun than α Centauri. And now, having got a somewhat definite idea of the form of the sun's domains, we may attempt the construction in them, first of a nebula and afterwards of a solar system, such as our text-books describe to us; introducing into the construction, as a matter of course, the variations from existing theories which, we believe, we have demonstrated to be necessary.

Perhaps we ought to confine our operations to these domains, and so we will almost exclusively; but the sun has been so long considered as one of many millions of stars, and as part of what is now looked upon as our universe, that we cannot help looking upon the whole as having been the result of one act of creation; more especially as we have no reason whatever for supposing it to have been built up piece by piece; and whatever ideas we may form of our own little part of it, we are bound to apply them to the whole. We may, therefore, lay the foundations of our undertaking in the following manner. By creation we mean only creation of nebulæ.