Dr. Croll says that if a velocity of 476 miles per second were not sufficient to produce the quantity of heat required, any other necessary velocity might be supposed, but when we consider that his supply of 300,000,000° C. would have to be increased to 82,000,000,000° C., in order to add 1° C. of heat to the matter dispersed through a sphere of 6,000,000,000 miles in diameter, it seems unnecessary to pursue the subject any farther.
We may now take a look at Dr. Braun's Impact Cosmogony, of which we know nothing beyond what is set forth in the Review in "Nature" already alluded to, but that is enough for our purpose. We understand that he extends his operations to the whole universe, which he conceives to have been formed out of almost unlimited, and almost imponderable, nebulous matter, not homogeneous, but with local irregularities in it, which "would lead to the breaking up of the nebula into a vast number of separate fragments." Out of one of these fragments he supposes the solar system to have been formed. This fragment would contain local irregularities also, which through condensation would lead to the formation of separate bodies, and these bodies are supposed to have been driven into their present forms, and gyrating movements of all kinds, by centric and eccentric collisions among themselves, caused by their mutual attractions. Of course anything can be supposed, but in a construction of this kind the idea is forced upon us of the necessity of the active superintendence of the Creator, to create in the proper places and bring in the matter at the exact moment required, and to see that the collisions were directed with the proper degree of energy and eccentricity, to construct the kind of machine that was proposed. To this idea we have no objections whatever, but we would like to see the necessity for it acknowledged. Perhaps Dr. Braun does acknowledge it, but the cosmogony is given to us, it would seem, to show what most probably was the original scheme of construction, and implying that no continual supervision and direction were required during the process. If Dr. Braun could show us some method of attraction, and suspension and variation of attraction, by which some of the separate bodies could be drawn towards each other so as to form a central mass, nebula, or sun, and to give it, by their impacts of collision, a rotary motion; and how others of the separate bodies could be formed and held in appropriate places, so as to be set in motion at the right moment; and how they were to be so set in motion without the direct action of the constructor, to revolve as planets around the central mass, we might be able to recognise that a mechanism such as that of the solar system might be brought into existence; but when we are left to discover all these requisites, and their _modus operandi_, we find that we might be as well employed in designing a cosmogony of our own.
