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With 24 Coloured Plates and Numerous Illustrations. New Edition. 10s. 6d.
With 4 Coloured Plates and Numerous Illustrations. New Edition. 7s. 6d.
With 11 Full Page Coloured and other Plates and Numerous Illustrations. 7s. 6d.
Being Talks with Young People about the Wonders of the Heavens With Rembrandt Frontispiece and 94 Illustrations in Text. 7s. 6d.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, London, New York, Toronto & Melbourne.
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[Illustration: AN ENGLISH SUNSET TINGED BY KRAKATOA. (_From a Drawing made at Chelsea at 4.40 p.m. on Nov. 26th, 1883, by Mr. W. Ascroft._)]
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BY SIR ROBERT S. BALL, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.
Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in the University of Cambridge, Author of “Star-Land,” “The Story of the Heavens,” etc. etc.
WITH FOUR COLOURED PLATES AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE MCMIX
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First Edition October 1901. Reprinted December 1901, 1903. Enlarged Edition 1909.
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SINCE these lectures were delivered in the Royal Institution of Great Britain there has been much advance in our knowledge of astronomy. The simultaneous advance in other sciences allied with astronomy has been, perhaps, even more remarkable. I am glad to avail myself of the opportunity afforded by a new issue of “The Earth’s Beginning” to draw attention to certain recent developments of science which relate in a very striking way to the subject of this volume, namely, the famous Nebular Theory of the origin of the solar system. It appears to me that these recent developments tend to reduce greatly, even if they do not altogether remove, the chief outstanding difficulty which has hitherto retarded the acceptance of the Nebular Theory.