After the axial spins have been made over to the same sense, the second consequence of tidal action in the case of two bodies revolving about their common centre of gravity is to slow down both spins until first the smaller and then the larger turn the same face to each other and remain thus constant ever after. Now such is precisely the pass to which we observe the satellites of the planets have come. All that we can be sure of now turn the same face always to their primary. The Moon was the first to betray her attitude, because the one we can best note. On scrutiny, however, Jupiter’s satellites, so far as we can make out, do the like; and Saturn’s, too. And a very proper attitude it is, this regard paid to compelling attraction. Thus one of the congruities we noticed stands accounted for. The satellites could hardly have been at first so observant; time has brought about this unfailing recognition of their lords. Of the peculiar massing of the bodies in the family of the Sun, and the still stranger copying of it in their own domestic circles, little can as yet be said in interpretation. That the planetary families and their ancestral group should agree is not the least strange part of the affair. It shows that none of them was fortuitous, but that at the formation of all some common principle presided, apportioning the aggregations to their proper place. But it is such fine print of the system’s history as at present to preclude discernment. So much for the details we may deduce of the method of our birth. We perceive unmistakably that our solar system grew to be what it is, and that it developed by agglomeration of its previously shattered fragments into the planets we behold to-day, but exactly how the process progressed we are as yet unable to precise. We are, however, as what I have mentioned and tabled show, every day accumulating data which will enable an eventual determination probably to be reached. From the fact of agglomeration, the essence of the affair, we turn to the traces it has left upon its several offspring. Just as the continued existence to-day of meteorites _in statu quo_ informs us of a previous body from which our nebula sprang; so a physical characteristic of our own earth at the present time shows it to have evolved from that nebula—even though we cannot make out all the steps. Of its having done so, we are far more sure than of how it did. That primitive man perceived that somewhere below him was a fiery region which was not an agreeable abode, is plain from his consigning to such Tophet those whose religious tenets did not square with his own. That his conception of it was not strictly scientific is evidenced by his not realizing that to bury his enemies was the way to make them take the first step of the journey thither. Indeed, the vindictive venting of his notions clearly indicates their source as volcanic, rather than bred of a general disapproval of a downward descent either in silicates or sin.