An Expository Outline of the ''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation''

by more powerful instruments many of them lose their cloudy form, and are resolved into shining points, "like spangles of diamond dust." It is in this way several nebulæ have yielded to the gigantic reflector of Lord ROSSE, and others with still greater optical resources may follow. This brings us to the first questionable and controversial portion of the Vestiges; namely,--the

NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

It is among the gaseous bodies just described, in the outer boundary of Nature, which neither telescope nor geometry can well reach, that speculation has laid its venue, and commenced its aerial castles. LAPLACE was the first to suggest the nebular hypothesis, which he did with great diffidence, not as a theory proved, or hardly likely, but as a mathematical possibility or illustration. His range of creation, moreover, was not so vast as that of our author, which assumes to compass the entire universe, but was limited to the evolution of the solar system. The mode in which this