The Asteroids.

This fact appears of itself sufficient to show that the production of the asteroids must have been a subsequent event to the formation of the solar system. With respect to the asteroids, it is conceivable that the destruction of the planet which formed them may have been produced by a large meteoric visitant, with a high velocity. This hypothesis shows that such bodies may exist in considerable numbers. Such a mass might conceivably bury itself in another body, and when its motion of mass was stopped, its heat might be sufficient to produce a pressure of many thousand atmospheres. Such an explosion of developed gas might reasonably be expected to blow the body to pieces. It is generally considered that if the asteroids had been produced by the destruction of a planet, the fragments would have the same mean distance from the sun, and would pass the same points in their orbits where the destruction occurred; which is contrary to the observed motions of these bodies. The hypothesis that they are pieces of a planet is therefore not generally accepted; but these assumptions are only true if the velocity remain the same, the eccentricity of the orbit the same, and there is no resisting atmosphere. The first of these assumptions is