The second and more important part of Professor Darwin's Presidential
address, delivered at Johannesburg on Wednes- day, proved to be an intensely interesting series of astronomical variations on the theme of cosmic flux. Professor Darwin proceeded to show how Bode's law of planetary distances pointed to, and was supported by, a solution of the problem of cosmical evolution by the theory of meteoric accretions. The nebular hypothesis of Laplace presented certain apparent fundamental divergences from this theory, but he himself believed that the discordances would one day be reconciled. We have not space even to summarise his discussion of the mathematical researches which sought to explain the birth of planets and satellites by the conjoint influences of gravitation and rotation, but may notice his general adherence to the side of the geologists, as opposed to the physicists, in regard to computing cosmic time—i.e., the age of the solar system— and his insistence on the importance of the discovery of radium as showing that concentration of matter is not the only source from which the sun may draw its heat.
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