If the idea of a nebula in the form of a cylinder with hemispherical ends is admitted as possible, or somewhat like a dumb-bell, the extreme diameters of the 9 successive nebulæ we have dealt with would be considerably different in their equatorial directions to what we have given them, although their polar diameters might continue to be not far from the same; but that would have very little effect on the operations we have gone through, seeing we have shown that there could be no actual divisions between them such as we have adopted; and that the division of the sheet of matter abandoned into separate rings must have been brought about by some means which we cannot explain; a process, nevertheless, which has been subject to some law, or laws, operating evidently in a regular and steady manner throughout the whole time, during which the matter was being abandoned, as is proved by the general uniformity, or harmony, in the distances of the planets from the sun. Should anyone come to be able to account for the division of this sheet of matter into distinct and separate rings, he will also be able to account for the acceleration of rate of revolution from one planet to another, and for the anomalous rates in the cases of the Earth and Venus.
In a former part of our work we have followed up, at different stages, the condensation of the original nebula until it attained the dimensions, appearance, and some of the features of the sun as it is, but we have still something to add as to how the condensation could produce a body so strictly spherical as the sun is represented to be. All the other bodies of the solar system, as far as astronomers have been able to measure them, are spheroids more or less oblate, and it seems strange that the principal should be the only one that does not conform to the general figure. It is rather hard on the notion that the original nebula gradually assumed the form of a lens, for it would require a special mode of manipulation of a very mechanical kind, rather than the steady, imperceptible self-action of the law of attraction, to transform a lens into even an oblate spheroid; to transform it into a perfect sphere would be absolutely impossible. For, if at the end of the process it was found that there was too much material to form a sphere, it would be hard to get rid of the superabundance, unless it was converted into meteorites--evidently another hand process. On the other hand, should a hole remain to be filled up, the material would have to be lugged in somehow from some of the errant masses, or lambeaux, which impact-theorists find it so easy to have at hand when required. Let us then think of why and how it came to pass that the sun is an almost perfect sphere.