** (This word is written 'gaard' in the Danish) -- Tr.
p 87
Here, too, we find differences existing in the solidity or density of the
spheroidally agglomerated matter. Our own solar system presents all stages
of 'mean' density (or of the relation of 'volume' to 'mass'.) On comparing
the planets from Mercury to Mars with the Sun and with Jupiter, and these
two last named with the yet inferior density of Saturn, we arrive, by a
descending scale -- to draw our illustration from the terrestrial substances
-- at the respective densities of antimony, honey, water, and pine wood. In
comets, which actually constitute the most considerable portion of our solar
system with respect to the number of individual forms, the concentrated
part, usually termed the 'head', or 'nucleus', transmits sidereal light
unimpaired. The mass of a comet probably in no case equals the five
thousandth part of that of the earth, so dissimilar are the formative
processes manifested in the original and perhaps still progressive
agglomerations of matter. In proceeding from general to special
considerations, it was particularly desirable to draw attention to this
diversity, not merely as a possible, but as an actually proved fact.
The purely speculative conclusions arrived at by Wright, Kant, and Lambert,
concerning the general structural arrangement of the universe, and of the
distribution of matter in space, have been confirmed by Sir William
Herschel, on the more certain path of observation and measurement.
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