LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
 . 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 The second note, under Fig. 29 on page 133 should 
 be under Fig. 5 on page 29. On page 80 the large 
 figure 1 under the title of the chapter should be 
 omitted. 
 
he Procession of Planets 
 
 A RADICAL DEPARTURE 
 
 FROM 
 
 Former Ideas of the Processes of Nature 
 
 SHOWING THE TRUE MOTIONS 
 OF MATTER 
 
 AjgW 
 
 OF THE * A 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 
 OF BY 
 
 FRANKLIN H. HEALD 
 
 Era of Man, 306 
 
 PRICE IN CLOTH $2.50 
 
Entered According to Act of Cpngress 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANKLIN H. HEALD 
 1906 
 
Number. 
 
 81 
 
 Owner MIlTERS/TY 
 
 Author 
 
 Illuminator 
 
 Carver 
 
 PtTBLJSHER 
 
 BAUMGARDT PUBLISHING CO- 
 
 116 N. Broadway. Los Angreles, Gal. 
 
 1 ^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. Form and Motion 17 
 
 Chapter II. Light, Heat and Electricity 32 
 
 Chapter III. Neptune and Uranus 41 
 
 Chapter IV. Saturn , 50 
 
 Chapter V. Jupiter 57 
 
 Chapter VI. The Asteroids 63 
 
 Chapter VII. Mars 69 
 
 Chapter VIII. The Earth 80 
 
 Chapter IX. Venus 88 
 
 Chapter X. Mercury 93 
 
 Chapter XI. The Inner Asteroids 97 
 
 Chapter XII. The Sun 104 
 
 Chapter XIII. Moons 130 
 
 Chapter XIV. Cornets '. 140 
 
 Chapter XV. Mathematical Proof of a Procession 150 
 
 Chapter XVI. The Crust of the Earth 154 
 
 Chapter XVII. What Great Men Have Said 172 
 
 Chapter XVIII. Proofs of a Procession of Solid Matter to the Sun 185 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book is not intended as a textbook on astronomy 
 as much as an attempt to correct some of the mistakes of 
 astronomers. It shows the true motions of matter as they 
 force themselves along the lines of least resistance. It 
 shows the opposite force to gravity, which Newton over- 
 looked, and which is expansion caused by heat. It shows 
 that there are but these two forces, or causes of force, 
 (gravity and heat) in nature and that they are self oper- 
 ating. 
 
 It teaches that there is always a procession of ex- 
 panded matter or gas, going up from the sun and a re- 
 turning procession of planets, moons, comets and other 
 solid matter, falling back to the sun, which keeps it sup- 
 plied with fuel and energy. 
 
 It furnishes the mathematical proof of such a proces- 
 sion in our solar system, by pointing out the facts con- 
 cerning their relative distances from the sun, and their 
 speed along their orbits, all of which astronomers have 
 measured and proven. 
 
 It teaches that all motions are related and governed 
 by the same laws; that suns are traveling around each 
 other, with their solar systems and falling toward each 
 other in binary systems; that binary systems are travel- 
 ing in galaxys, and that all is system and order as forced 
 by the motions of all matter and that it could not be 
 
 11 
 
12 PREFACE 
 
 otherwise without a mind or intent or purpose to inter- 
 fere. 
 
 I have taught this theory since 1899 and have pub- 
 lished a magazine, Higher Science of the Motions of Mat- 
 ter, since 1900 to teach the theory. My teaching has been 
 accepted by all who have studied it except astronomers 
 and scientists who belong to societies and associations 
 teaching other theories and depending upon such socie- 
 ties and associations for their standing or support. I 
 do not complain of them. I appreciate the fact that 
 they cannot depart from the theories and hyotheses which 
 they are taught, without losing the support of the insti- 
 tutions or societies to which they belong and from which 
 they hold diplomas or from which they have influence, 
 and am therefore satisfied to know that the theory of a 
 procession of planets proves itself to be correct. 1 do 
 not expect it to be generally accepted by the present gen- 
 eration of scientists, for the reasons given. 
 
THE 
 
 ij UNIVERSITY 
 
 V OF ^ 
 
 I. 
 
 FORM AND MOTION. 
 
 Matter has three forms; solid, liquid and gaseous, and 
 two motions, expanding and contracting. All the mo- 
 tions of matter and all the forms and phenomena of 
 matter and nature are made by the expansion and con- 
 traction of matter by heating and cooling; or, by different 
 degrees of heat. 
 
 Water takes up the least room when it is in the solid 
 form ; when it is in a crystallized state its atoms are lying 
 between straight parallel lines. When 32 degrees of 
 heat are added, its bulk is increased and it becomes a 
 liquid; and when the heat is increased to 212 degrees it 
 becomes a gas and occupies 1730 times the space it occu- 
 pied as a solid. So all matter increases in bulk as it is 
 heated; and upon its specific gravity or weight, depends 
 its increase in bulk as it is heated. To illustrate: one 
 cubic foot of water weighs 40 pounds when solid, while 
 one cubic foot of gold weighs 2000 pounds, or fifty times 
 as much. The weight is not changed by expanding into 
 gas, but the space occupied by a cubic foot of gold when 
 expanded into gas, is fifty times as great as a cubic foot 
 of water when expanded into gas, or, 1730 x 50=86,500 
 feet. 
 
 17 
 
18 ^^_^^~ THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 It has been estimated that average matter expanded 
 into gas, occupies about eleven thousand times more 
 space on the earth, than solid matter; but we must not 
 overlook the fact that it is under the pressure of the air 
 and that the farther we leave the earth, the more space 
 
 Fijr. 2. Mount Hamilton and the Lick Observatory. This world-re- 
 nowned astronomical observatory, in Santa Clara county, is due to the 
 beneficence of James Lick, a California pioneer. There is a grand view 
 Irom the summit. 
 
 the same weight of gas will occupy, until we get beyond 
 the weight of the earth's atmosphere; and then the 
 farther we go from the sun, the more space the same 
 weight will occupy, until we reach the half way point of 
 gravity to the nearest sun. All space between the suns 
 must be occupied by expanded matter, because as long 
 as there is space to be filled, matter will expand to fill it, 
 for the reason of the expansion of heat at the nearest 
 sun below (provided it is the same size as the next one). 
 The reason for this is that the gas at the sun below must 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 19 
 
 hold the gas above, up as far as it can; and when it meets 
 the gas from the next sun, where upward expansion from 
 the two are equal, of course it can go no farther. Gas 
 is composed of spherical atoms, each one from the sun, 
 held up and forced up, by pressure from the next one be- 
 low, so that it is easy for us to perceive that a column 
 or pile of these atoms has weight; and the force of ex- 
 pansion by heat at the sun must force them up and hold 
 them there till they become cold enough to contract into 
 liquid or solid matter, when they begin to fall again, by 
 gravity, to the sun or center from which they expanded. 
 These two opposite forces, expansion and contraction 
 or heating and cooling, keep matter in ceaseless motion. 
 The force of heat is forever disintegrating matter and 
 pushing it up or away from the sun, expanding and in- 
 creasing its bulk, and the force of gravity or contraction 
 is forever separating it into its elements and contracting 
 its bulk again, back to the sun. If there was only the 
 force of heat in nature, all matter would be expanded 
 into space as gas, never to return; and if there was only 
 the force of gravity or contraction in nature, all matter 
 would finally be contracted into one vast body, never to 
 be distributed again. In either case, all would be silence 
 and death, as there would be no more motion, which is 
 life. We might say that heat is the life of matter and 
 gravity the death of matter, but for the fact that matter 
 must expand before it can contract and must contract 
 before it can expand; therefore it is always in motion or 
 living. When solid matter separated into its various 
 
20 THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 elements, is returned to the sun by falling or gravity, the 
 friction of its disintegration or chemical dissolution, and 
 its reuniting or fluxing into one element again, together 
 with the collision of its fall or concussion made by stop- 
 page of its motion causes the same amount of heat that 
 it originally cost the sun to expand it into gas. There 
 is and can be no loss of matter or force in nature. If we 
 shoot a cannon ball against a solid iron wall which will 
 instantly stop it, we find it will be instantly heated to 
 the exact amount of heat or force used to fire it after de- 
 ducting the amount of friction in the air or medium 
 thru which it travels from the cannon's mouth to the 
 wall; and this friction will not be lost, because, in the 
 economy of nature, it expands the medium, air, thru 
 which it passed. 
 
 When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the force of gravity 
 or contraction, by wondering why the apple fell to the 
 earth instead of into the sky, if he had wondered also 
 how it came to be in the tree-top, he would have dis- 
 covered the law of heat-expansion, the opposite of grav- 
 ity, or the other great force in nature. It was the force 
 of expansion by heat, acting on the soil which sent the 
 sap up thru the pores of the tree, to the apple blossom 
 to build the apple; and it is the same thruout all nature; 
 the force of heat or expansion can never hang an apple 
 so high that the force of gravity, cooling or contraction, 
 will not find and bring it down. , Neither can it send 
 matter so far up into space that gravity cannot collect it, 
 separate it into its elements and return it to the sun. It 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANERS 21 
 
 is the force of expansion by heat which expands or evap- 
 orates the water of the sea into colorless vapor (gas of 
 water) and sends it over the mountain tops; but it is the 
 force of gravity or contraction which condenses it into 
 clouds and raindrops and brings it down again to refresh 
 the earth. It is an adage of antiquity that "what goes 
 up must come down/' meaning there can be no loss in 
 nature. It is the force of heat-expansion which swells 
 
 Fig. 3. View of the San Gabriel Valley, from Mount Lowe railway. 
 This unique cable incline and electric road carries the visitor, at midwin- 
 ter, within a couple of hours, from roses and oranges to snow, through 
 forests of pine. 
 
 or lightens the atmosphere and forces it away to melt 
 the ice and snow of the frozen north; but it is the force 
 of gravity which condenses it by cooling and brings back 
 the cold north wind. It is the force of heat or expansion 
 which sends the upper currents of the sea flowing north 
 or south to either pole, taking the place of the cold (con- 
 densed) water which flows back underneath where the 
 
22 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 water is heavier. It is the force of heat generated by 
 (lie friction of decay or chemical decomposition of food 
 in our stomachs that warms our blood, feeds our tissues, 
 muscles and nerves, and sustains our life; but it is the 
 force of gravity or contraction that collects the sub- 
 stances, condenses and ossifies the bones, muscles and 
 tissues, finally bringing the ripeness and wrinkles of old 
 age and death. What we call chemical force is the heat 
 generated by the friction of chemical action in the disso- 
 lution of various elements of matter into larger bulk that 
 causes force. In the rotting of the log as in its burning, 
 it is the uniting of the carbon of the log with the oxygen 
 of the air or water that causes its expansion into gas, 
 and this distended, gaseous bulk of the log may represent 
 force in heat, light, electricity or other motion. Just as 
 much heat, and just as much gas is developed by the log 
 that rots away in five or fifty years, as by the log that 
 burns in five minutes. In fact we can make thousands 
 of combinations of elements so readily and with such 
 rapidity, as to cause explosions. 
 
 When matter returns to the sun (as solid matter) crys- 
 tallized into separate elements, and is expanded into gas 
 tens of thousands of times its bulk when solid, and is 
 swelled up into space, it is composed of a perfect mixture 
 of all the elements in matter and nature ; but when it has 
 been forced up into the intensely cold regions of space 
 where it contracts into solid matter and gathers into 
 worlds, it separates again into different elements such as 
 water, air and various minerals, as it goes thru its evolu- 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 2$ 
 
 tions returning to the sun, thus storing force to be again 
 released at the end of its journey. It is the chemical 
 reuniting, then of these elements which gravity has sep- 
 arated and brought back to the sun in shape of planets, 
 moons, asteroids, comets, meteors and cosmic dust, which 
 causes the chemical friction and concussion necessary to 
 furnish it with a never ending supply of energy and heat. 
 As it is swelled into gas at the sun by heat we find it to 
 be composed of a complete admixture of all matter in the 
 proportion it exists in nature, carrying the life, expan- 
 sion, and buoyancy of youth. Each atom of its substance 
 or gas, also carries with it all the motions of that part 
 of the sun from which it separated, which are also the 
 original startings of all the motions of the terresterial 
 bodies. So it is all thru nature; we must look to these 
 two original forces, expansion and contraction or heat- 
 ing and cooling, always in opposition to each other, for 
 an explanation of all motion and phenomena. They will 
 surely give it when rightly interpreted. What they do, 
 however, is only temporary; because what one is doing 
 the other is as industriously undoing; and thus in the 
 chapter following we shall see that there is a continual 
 outpouring of matter and energy from the sun, in every 
 direction thru space, and a continual returning of this 
 matter and energy, guided by the minor forces in the 
 great circling orbits of its planets, moons and other 
 bodies. "What goes up must come down"; and, as ex- 
 panded matter is always going up from -the sun, it will 
 never cease to come down, until the sun itself comes down 
 
24 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 to its own binary companion sun, when their great speed 
 and necessary development of heat and expansion, will 
 destroy their centers of gravity for each other and again 
 force them apart by centrifugal force and expansion of 
 heat, to their greatest limit, after which the whole process 
 of their planetary systems will commence over again. 
 
 This discovery of a procession of planets is simply that 
 the substance of the sun is being constantly expanded 
 into gas, of tens of thousands of times greater bulk, and 
 being composed of the same materials which was decom- 
 posed to make it, is cooled and crystallized into cosmic 
 dust as the heat leaves it and it reaches that region of 
 intense cold beyond Neptune where it must contract into 
 solidity. 
 
 Lockyer's Elements of Astronomy, Note 101, says: 
 
 In note 48 the marked character of the distribution of stars (suns) 
 of our universe, giving rise to the Milky Way, was pointed out. The 
 distribution of the nebulae, however, is very different; in general they 
 lie out of the Milky Way, so that they are either less condensed there, 
 or the visible universe, as distinguished from our own universe, is less 
 extended in that direction. They are most numerous in a zone which 
 crosses the Milky Way at right angles, the constellation of Virgo being 
 so rich in them that a portion of it is termed "the nebulous region of 
 Virgo." 
 
 Please notice that at right angles to the Milky Way, is 
 on the plane of the sun's equator and exactly where we 
 must expect to find the condensed crystals of this ex- 
 panded gas where new worlds should be forming. 
 
 The same authority, Note 7, says: 
 
 Far away, and comparatively so dim that the naked eye can make 
 little out of them, lie the nebulae (from Latin nebula, meaning cloud) 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 25 
 
 % 
 
 so called because in the telescope they put on strange cloudlike forms. 
 They differ as much from stars as comets differ from planets. 
 
 In Note 100, under the head of Variable Nebulae, he 
 says of them: 
 
 The phenomena of variable, lost, new, and temporary stars have 
 their equivalents in the case of nebulae, the light of which it has 
 been lately discovered (twenty-five years ago) is in some cases subject 
 to great variations. 
 
 Thus we see they are not still; are in motion and no 
 doubt in a crude condition of rotation. 
 
 Fig. 4. The Negatively charged Nebula A, is supposed to cause ro- 
 tation in B by Electrical Attraction, 
 
 At this point, and under the existing condition of gas 
 condensing into crystals (which continue the motions 
 given the atoms of gas by the sun), we can readily see 
 they would gradually gather into larger and larger 
 bunches, slowly rotate and revolve around the sun (about 
 once in twelve hundred years providing they had still 
 the same speed with which they left the sun's equator) 
 until a foundation was laid for a new planet which would 
 gradually gather by attraction until it had fallen so far 
 
26 THE PROCESSION OP PLANETS 
 
 from these higher regions that it would only attract satel- 
 lites. Then another world would commence to form^ and 
 the last one cease to collect matter (except its moons as 
 they fall to it one by one). After billions of years the 
 planets again return to recruit that great chemical center 
 of heat, life and light, after having passed thru their 
 many stages of evolution: from a loose cloud of crystals 
 of cosmic dust to a dismembered stream of fragments 
 dropping into the sun; (having gathered their moons 
 from the space above them) passing thru the fires of fric- 
 tion (generated by their grinding sand) ; melting by the 
 immense heat thus generated; burning, melting and 
 radiating much of their weight away until they reduce 
 their size to that of second class planets; occasionally 
 one bursting at this dangerpoint into asteroids; cooling 
 and forming their crusts; evolving life (first plants and 
 then on up to man) ; dying and turning one of their poles 
 to the sun; increasing their speed to such an astonishing 
 rate that they gradually go to pieces and fall into the 
 sun, that great central rejuvenating caldron of heat where 
 they are chemically dissolved to be again sent up beyond 
 the orbit of Neptune to make the same long journey. 
 
 There are a multitude of reasons proving that the 
 formation of worlds begins in the space above Neptune 
 who swings in his mighty orbit three billion miles above 
 the sun. Half the distance to the nearest sun, Alpha 
 Centura, is 12,500,000,000,000 miles and all within that 
 space should be within our sun's attraction. All matter 
 leaving the sun carries every motion of the sun with it, 
 
THE PBOCBSSION OF PLANETS 27 
 
 no matter if it is the smallest subdivision of matter. It 
 hns these motions when a part of the sun and therefore 
 can never lose them in space where there is no resistance 
 to their action. If the planets were thrown out of the 
 sun in a body, as has been supposed, scientists would not 
 hesitate to admit that they would retain the motions of 
 the sun. They would admit it no doubt, if the body 
 weighed but a thousand tons, or one ton, or one ounce. 
 In fact at what subdivision of matter can the motion 
 change! Must we not admit that the atoms of gas retain 
 the motion of the sun, the same as they would if the size 
 of a moon? As these atoms crystallize into dust and col- 
 lect into worlds, it is a collection of motion as well as of 
 matter because the motions of all the atoms are alike and 
 therefore the new worlds could take no other motion than 
 that from west to east which, we will see, is the inherent 
 motion of matter; inherited by all the bodies of the solar 
 system from their parent the sun, which in turn inherited 
 its motion from the unknown body from which it came. 
 Suppose we set a top spinning ; if we give it a little swing 
 as the string comes off, we give it two motions, the rotat- 
 ing motion of spinning, and the orbital motion it observes 
 in its circles on the floor. Now if we could throw it into 
 space (where there was no resistance) it would go on 
 making these motions until drawn to the nearest body 
 or the one over which it would fall. 
 
 All matter seems to move naturally from west to east, 
 and when we find a body moving or rotating from east to 
 west, it is only temporary. This is why the suns, planets, 
 
28 THE PBOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 moons and asteroids rotate and travel in their orbits from 
 west to east, it is why storms and storm centers travel in 
 a circle or orbit from west to east. It is why soaring 
 birds travel from west to east. All vines wind up a stick 
 or string from west to east, and will not be forced to 
 grow otherwise. It is the inherent motion of matter 
 which causes us to whirl and make an orbit in this direc- 
 tion in the ballroom. Blindfold a person and he will in- 
 variably make an orbit in this direction. We pass each 
 other on the street the same way; races are run on the 
 track the same way and even machinery set to turn 
 against this law of nature, will wear out sooner or refuse 
 to give satisfaction. Nature does not make motions by 
 chance; it has no changing mind, but to understand its 
 motions we must use less mystery and more reason. 
 
 The Nebular Theory of the formation of the solar sys- 
 tem is, that it was once a single revolving mass of nebu- 
 lous matter with its center where the sun is located; that 
 one at a time this immense revolving mass threw off rings 
 by contracting the balance of the mass, leaving the ring 
 which then pulled itself together by some unknown means 
 and made a world. The figure shows a circle around the 
 sun 6,000,000,000 miles in diameter or 18,000,000,000 miles 
 in circumference; the latter distance representing the 
 outside rim of the original nebula. We can readily see 
 that a point on the outside rim would have to travel this 
 great distance while the sun or hub turned once, which 
 would be in twenty-four days. Neptune would be the 
 first planet formed as it is farthest away and would have 
 
THE PROCESSION OP PLANETS 
 
 29 
 
 Fig. 5, Nebular Theory. 
 
 to come off first. One at a time the planets were sup- 
 posed to have been thrown off till there was nothing left 
 hut, the sun, and it is gradually wasting away and capable 
 of lasting but 5,000,000 years longer. 
 
 According to this hypothesis, this mass revolved on 
 its axis 18,000,000,000 miles in twenty-four days, or at the 
 enormous speed of 750,000,000 miles per day; and this 
 is the time Neptune would have to be making on his orbit, 
 in order to carry out the nebular theory. Each ring left 
 off later would have to travel more slowly still because 
 
30 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 nearer the axis or pole of the mass ; and when we reached 
 Mercury, we would find it making the slowest time of all 
 the planets, instead of the fastest as it does. Neptune 
 travels but 250,000 miles per day and each one travels 
 faster as we come nearer to the sun; Mercury traveling 
 2,500,000 miles per day, or ten times as fast as Neptune, 
 thus exactly reversing the order of speed required by the 
 nebular theory or hypothesis. 
 
 Again: according to the nebular theory the oldest 
 planets should be farthest from the sun, having neces- 
 sarily been the first ones thrown off, whereas facts show 
 the reverse in this respect also, and we find by the means 
 of spectroscopic photography, density and temperature, 
 that the youngest planet is Neptune and that each one is 
 older than its outside neighbor and younger than its 
 neighbor next towards the sun. 
 
 Aside from all this, there is the impossibility that a 
 ring of matter traveling around an orbit could ever gather 
 into one body. It would be an impossibility; because, 
 each individual particle of the ring would have the same 
 motion and must of necessity continue in the same rela- 
 tion to each other, unless it shortened its orbit, in which 
 case the particles would only approach each other as the 
 ring became shorter, and could never concentrate into one 
 globular mass. The rings of Saturn are good evidence 
 of this ; they do not show any attempt at f orming a sphere, 
 but simply approach each other as the orbits shorten. 
 
 The nebular theory does not provide any supply what- 
 ever for the maintenance of the sun's energy, but leaves 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 31 
 
 it to finally contract to nothing and disappear. If the sun 
 is contracting and radiating itself away, the gas of its 
 expanded matter must go somewhere; it cannot be lost; 
 and, what goes up must come down. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
II. 
 
 LIGHT, HEAT AND ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton believed light to be composed of min- 
 ute, disintegrated particles traveling thru space at the 
 speed of 183,000 miles per second. There is another 
 theory of light; the undulating theory which is, that all 
 space is filled with ether; and that light travels thru it 
 as waves travel from a center in every direction; as for 
 example waves from a stone thrown upon the surface of 
 still water. 
 
 Fig. 6. Fig. 2. 3, Electric Lantern for Micrometer Illumination; Fig. 5. Slit 
 of Spectroscope; Fig. 8, Collimator Lens; Fig. 16, Searchlight Carbon 3,000,000 
 candle power; Fig. 17. Two ordinary city Arc Light Carbons. 
 
 32 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 33 
 
 This last theory seems to be much more reasonable, 
 except that its advocates do not seem to know the nature 
 of what they call "ether" and which they evidently do 
 not consider substance. 
 
 Since publishing the first and second editions of the 
 Procession of Planets, having had more time to experi- 
 ment and consider these motions, I find them to be simply 
 the jar running thru the gas of expanded matter which, 
 we see, fills all space. It would not be possible for such 
 a small atom of matter to travel at so great a speed as 
 1S3,000 miles per second; but it is perfectly reasonable 
 that the impulse or jar should do so. 
 
 Let me illustrate it in this way : suppose we have a gun 
 barrel twenty-four inches in length, and we fill it with 
 one hundred bullets, each one-fourth of an inch in diam- 
 eter. Now if we push one more bullet in at the breach 
 of the gun barrel, the one at the muzzle will drop out in- 
 stantly; and would do so no' matter how long the gun 
 barrel, provided it was filled with bullets. Each indi- 
 vidual bullet traveled but one-fourth of an inch; yet, the 
 impulse, or force, traveled as far as there were bullets 
 touching each other, inasmuch as each must move the 
 one in front of it away. The movement or impulse 
 which is the result of force, applies to light, electricity, 
 thot, heat, etc. 
 
 Let us suppose there are 39,000 of the atoms of ex- 
 panded gas of matter in one inch in length, or 229,806,- 
 720,000,000,000 in a line between the sun and earth ; when 
 another atom is added at the sun end of the line by ex- 
 
34 THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 pansion of solid matter, it must have room, therefore it 
 pushes the atom in front of it away from the sun the 
 width of its own diameter. That one pushes the next, 
 and each one in the line pushes the one in front of (or 
 above) it, the same distance because they must all have 
 room; each atom moving away from the sun only the 
 width of its own diameter, yet the combined movement 
 amounts to 93,000,000 miles. 
 
 This movement may be illustrated more simply, per- 
 haps, if we use an iron rod instead of bullets. If we push 
 the iron rod one inch from the sun at that end, the end at 
 the earth will also move one inch from the sun. No sin^n 
 inch of the rod has moved more than one inch and yet, 
 93,000,000 miles from the sun, the rod moved one inch 
 and exerted the same force that was applied at the sun. 
 
 In the case of light, heat, electricity, etc., it requires 
 eight minutes for the force or impulse to reach the earth; 
 while in the case of the solid rod, the transfer of motion 
 might be instantaneous. 
 
 This tardiness of light may be accounted for upon the 
 hypothesis that the atoms of expanded matter are more 
 elastic than the atoms of the iron bar; requiring that 
 much more time to take up the "slack" in the long line 
 or ray of atoms; but it is more likely because they lay 
 loosely in this vast sea of atoms (arranged like honey 
 comb cells) and not being directly in front of each other, 
 they would have a sidewise motion or vibration peculiar 
 to advancing light. 
 
 When each new atom is added at the sun, which must 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 35 
 
 be with lightning rapidity, the whole line or ray, and in 
 fact, the whole sea of atoms in space must vibrate or jar. 
 If the ray of atoms was confined in a line and perfectly 
 rigid, then perhaps the impulse would be instantaneous. 
 It is just as impossible for one of these infinitesimal 
 atoms of gas to travel 183,000 miles a second, as it is for 
 the impulse to do so in space devoid of atoms of gas to 
 communicate the impulse.. 
 
 Electricity travels the same way; and, more than 
 likely, is a degree of heat or force. These motions are in 
 fact, closely related, interchangeable forms of force. We 
 can make either one of them from either one of the others, 
 by employing different kinds of resistance. We may 
 transmit force for hundreds of miles over a wire from a 
 dynamo (where force is applied) to a motor where the 
 work is being done. When the force required to do the 
 work at the motor is more than the force applied at the 
 dynamo, the motor will "stall;" and at the same time the 
 dynamo will stop; exactly as if a belt were running be- 
 tween them, carrying the force. 
 
 The reason that sunlight is hot in the atmosphere, is 
 because its motions of vibration meet with more resist- 
 ance than outside of it. If we go on the top of a high 
 mountain, the sunlight grows cooler as the pressure of 
 the air grows lighter, although we have been traveling 
 towards the sun. 
 
 Some scientists claim there is only darkness and 
 absolute zero putside of the atmosphere. This could not 
 be true, because the motion of light could not be trans- 
 
36 THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 mitted if there was not gas for it to travel thru by vibrat- 
 ing it ; and where there is any motion, there must be some 
 heat. 
 
 The spectroscope is showing us many startling new 
 things about light and force, one of which is that force 
 is the foundation of all the motions we call heat, light, 
 electricity, thot, sound, and even life itself. The spec- 
 troscopic photograph of a man's head, taken in the dark, 
 shows a halo of light around it, more especially if he is 
 thinking. The more intently he is thinking, the plainer 
 the light. This proves that thot is a force; heat or elec- 
 tric, and kindred with the other forms of force. Growing 
 plants develop heat; and the spectroscope can photo- 
 graph this heat as light that human eyes can see. There 
 is little doubt that some animals, cats for instance, and 
 some birds, such as owls, locate their prey in the dark by 
 this light. The Will-o'-the-wisp is a motion of light, 
 thrown off by the growing or decaying of plants in a 
 swamp. Fox-fire is the force of a rapidly growing fungus 
 or plant, upon the heat of a decaying log or stump; and 
 there are many such examples of force in nature, awaiting 
 only explanation by means of careful investigation. 
 
 A great amount of time is wasted, or at least used, 
 in discussing such questions as "Is there any light beyond 
 the atmosphere ? " I have also heard long debates on the 
 question of whether there is or is not any sound where 
 there is no ear to hear it. If there is light in space be- 
 tween the sun and the earth, it could not be seen unless 
 there was an eye to see it, i. e., a retina for it to vibrate 
 
ME PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 Fig. 7. Professor Langley's Infra Red, or Thermal Spectrum. The stripes 
 should be placed end to end. 
 
38 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 upon; therefore we will never be able to see it personally, 
 tho we may be sure the force is there, just as it is in 
 the wire between the motor and dynamo; and just as it 
 is in the belt which runs between the engine and the 
 mill. 
 
 As we have seen under Form and Motion, heat- 
 expanded matter fills all the universe of endless space; 
 and there can be no vacuum in nature. There are centers 
 of matter, but up from these centers the surrounding 
 gasses simply become less dense and more sensitive. They 
 never disappear. They could not disappear; because, 
 like dividing ten by three, there would always be a re- 
 mainder. If there was no gas of expanded matter filling 
 the entire space of the universe, the motion of heat, light, 
 electricity, sound or any other force could not reach us 
 from the sun or from the other suns, millions of times as 
 far away. There must be a substance to be agitated, or 
 this motion, jar, vibration or impulse of force could not 
 be transmitted. Neither of the motions can pass thru 
 an artificial vacuum. In experimenting with liquid air, 
 it is found by placing it in a bottle, inside of a larger 
 bottle, with as near a vacuum as can be had between, 
 that almost no heat can reach it; and it can be thus kept 
 in a liquid state for as many days as hours formerly. 
 
 At the surface of the earth, where air has a weight 
 (or pressure) of 14 pounds to the square inch at sea level, 
 one cubic foot of water will make 1730 cubic feet of gas 
 of water or vapor. This expansion is caused, of course, 
 by heat. The more specific gravity an element has, the 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 39 
 
 
 
 more heat it requires to expand it into gas and the more 
 space it occupies. Gold, for instance, is many times 
 heavier than water; and the bulk of a cubic foot of gold, 
 when changed into gas by heat, would be just as many 
 times as great as a cubic foot of water changed into gas, 
 or vapor, by heat. The less heat it takes to change 
 matter into expanded gas, the less cooling or pressure it 
 requires to change it back into liquid or solid matter. It 
 takes but a few degrees of heat to expand water into 
 vapor, and, likewise, it requires but a few degrees cooler 
 to contract it back again into liquid so that it can fall 
 back to earth as rain. As long as enough heat remains 
 in it to keep it expanded, it cannot return thru itself, 
 because it is more dense the nearer it approaches the 
 earth. 
 
 This same law or condition must and does hold good 
 with all matter. Matter, expanded by the intense heat of 
 the sun (which is 146- times hotter than the Drummond 
 Light) is the gas of a complete admixture of all the ele- 
 ments in nature; and requires the intense cold of the 
 regions beyond Neptune to reduce or condense most of it 
 back into crystals of solid matter. (I say "most," be- 
 cause, as before shown, there is always a remainder when 
 the atoms of gas are divided, or else light and heat could 
 not travel). It may of course be possible that some of 
 the gas expanded at the sun, condenses at a much higher 
 temperature than others; and it would certainly appear 
 to be the case when we remember that beyond Neptune, 
 in the region of the nebulous clouds (which surround the 
 
40 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 ecliptic of the solar system) the major part of matter 
 apparently condenses to solid form, yet there are still 
 finer gasses remaining which reach on and on, thru bil- 
 lions of miles of cold, dark space, and which perhaps may 
 never crystallize. Many scientists entertain the belief 
 that when matter condenses in the region where new 
 worlds are formed, the heat or electric energy is pressed 
 out of it and it returns to the sun as currents of electric- 
 ity or heat ; but we must surely all agree that this would 
 be an utter impossibility, because as we have seen, heat 
 and electricity and light are only motions, could not be a 
 part of solid matter, and could never be regenerated ex- 
 cept by the friction of falling matter or chemical re- 
 union. 
 
III. 
 
 NEPTUNE AND URANUS. 
 
 If the sun is forever throwing out heat, energy and 
 substance (as almost all astronomers and scientists 
 admit) it must also have a supply of material coming in, 
 with which to sustain itself. Let us then, carefully ex- 
 amine this procession of returning planets, moons aster- 
 oids, comets, meteors, and other matter, commencing at 
 the farthest planet revealed by our largest telescopes, and 
 let each one give its own evidence that it is older than 
 its outside neighbor and younger than its neighbor to- 
 wards the sun. Let us consider them all carefully, from 
 far away Neptune, that vast, cold, blue collection of 
 crystals, on down to Mercury, the little heavy dead world 
 which, like our old dead moon of the earth, is now held 
 in its last struggle with one of its poles pointed towards 
 the sun, and like the moth circling around the candle, is 
 being drawn surely and swiftly to the sacrifice. 
 
 Neptune, 2,800,000,000 miles from the sun, is so far 
 away that even with the large and fine telescopes of 
 modern times, it .cannot be very well studied ; but we can, 
 however, find a number of facts in regard to it, which 
 help prove the theory of a procession of planets; one of 
 which is that it is a cold, blue mass of loose material. The 
 spectroscope shows the difference between a cold body 
 
 41 
 
42 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 which reflects light, and one which radiates light direct 
 from its own fires. Neptune is found to be of the former 
 class; of very low density: Its bluish colored disk has 
 no markings, not even bands; so that we can tell almost 
 
 Pig:. 8. Spectroscopic Instrument in Lowe Observatory. 
 
 nothing about its rotation upon its axis. It moves, in its 
 orbit around the sun, more slowly than any other planet ; 
 requiring one hundred and sixty-five years at the rate of 
 about 250,000 miles per day. It is 35,000 miles in dia- 
 meter, and of so low a density, that it can hardly be con- 
 sidered solid matter. The finding of the planet by Her- 
 shell was one of the greatest feats of astronomy ever ac- 
 complished by figures and reason at that time. By watch- 
 ing the orbit of Uranus, it was found that some unknown 
 influence was acting upon it. After much hard calcula- 
 tion and figuring, it was finally concluded that a planet 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 43 
 
 occupied the space outside of Uranus, at the proper ratio. 
 Years afterwards, when the first great telescope was 
 turned upon the exact spot designated, Neptune ap- 
 peared. 
 
 Neptune has but two moons large enough to be seen 
 with modern telescopes; but no doubt there are or will 
 be not less than a score; since we find that planets farthest 
 away have the most moons and rings, gradually losing 
 them, one at a time, as they fall to the planet. These two 
 moons of Neptune are said to have a retrograde motion, 
 contrary to every other motion in the solar system; while 
 the moons of Uranus revolve around it almost at right 
 angles to the plane of its equator, rising in the south and 
 setting in the north. 
 
 When we come to Saturn, its moons and rings are 
 almost on the plane of its equator; and at Jupiter, they 
 are exactly so. In another chapter we will consider the 
 reasons for this, and why their orbit is turned over as the 
 planet grows in age, until they conform to the laws of 
 nature as they appear to. 
 
 Uranus is visible to the naked eye, but is very faint. 
 It is but 32,000 miles in diameter and requires 84 years to 
 complete its orbit around the sun. The sun gives 900 
 times as much light to the earth, as it gives to Neptune, 
 and 300 times as much as to Uranus; therefore it would 
 make very little difference whether it was day or night, 
 or winter or 'summer on either of these planets. The 
 latter planet certainly gives proof, by its bands and 
 warmer color, that the friction (caused by rotation of its 
 
44 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 loose fragments) has caused some heat; and it is much 
 warmer than Neptune, which gives not the least sign of 
 warmth. We cannot be sure of the time of the rotation 
 upon its axis, further than that according to the law of 
 Procession of Planets; the cool planets all seem to re- 
 volve alike or once in 24 hours. It is only the heated ones 
 that rotate faster as they become more heated. Of course 
 their equators travel faster as they are larger; for in- 
 stance, Mars rotates in 24 hours, but being smaller than 
 the earth, its equator only moves at the rate of 600 
 miles per hour. When the first class planets appear 
 to rotate faster than once in 24 hours, it is because of their 
 increasing heat; and the equator always moves faster 
 than the regions toward the poles. The same may bo 
 said of the sun, as the spots at the equator travel much 
 faster than the spots at a higher latitude, leaving the 
 latter far behind as the sun rotates on its axis. 
 
 A large planet like Jupiter would move at the rate of 
 12,000 miles per hour at its equator, if it revolved in 24 
 hours; and the great red spots show that the inside re- 
 volves much more slowly than the outside, or than mat- 
 ter at higher latitudes. No doubt when Uranus has 
 reached the present position of Saturn, millions of years 
 in the future, it will have gained the same heat and show 
 a yellowish color, with bright bands almost to its poles. 
 
 Sir William Thompson estimates the time since the 
 earth first formed its crust, to be 400,000,000 years; and 
 geologists agree that it is a reasonable time. This, when 
 applied to the discovery of a procession of planets, would 
 take the earth back to the position now occupied by Mars 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 45 
 
 (who has no drift, or mountains from which to make a 
 drift), and establishes that time as the time between the 
 making of worlds; or, giving us a planet every 400,000,- 
 000 years. 
 
 Following this estimate, and allowing time for Nep- 
 tune, we would have eleven such spaces, allotting 4,400,- 
 000,000 years for a planet to exist in its spiral returning 
 orbit from Neptune regions back to the sun to be again 
 disintegrated. 
 
 The time will no doubt come when, with better tele- 
 scopes and better cameras, not yet invented, we will be 
 able to detect a new planet forming in the clouds of 
 nebulae outside of Neptune. This would add 400,000,000 
 years more to the age of a planet. Of course this time 
 is too long to be comprehended by our present brain 
 capacity; but during the history of many thousand years, 
 we know of scarcely any change in the approach of celes- 
 tial bodies to the sun; and we must go to the history kept 
 by the rocks, before the time of man, to find a recorded 
 difference of climate on the earth. The glaciers may have 
 existed two hundred million years ago when the earth 
 was much more cooled than Mars is now (or should be, 
 if he were of a regular size) and yet, was so much farther 
 from the sun than now, that our winter poles were much 
 colder than now and winter much longer on account of its 
 greater orbit. Immense growths of vegetation also have 
 been produced during these long summers of continual 
 sunshine, aided by the additional heat of the earth, then 
 just forming a crust. 
 
46 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 There are certain facts in connection with the solar 
 system which astronomers, physicists and scientists can 
 and have determined by means of the telescope, spectro- 
 scope, camera and other instruments, that cannot be de- 
 nied. The difficulty seems to have been to put this evi- 
 dence together properly. If we find by examining the 
 planets from Neptune to the sun, that each one is more 
 heated than the last, until we reach a certain point, half 
 way from Neptune to the sun, (the region of the Aster- 
 oids), and then that each one is cooler than the last, till 
 we reach the sun, we may be sure there is a good and suf- 
 ficient reason for these conditions. If we find that they 
 grow smaller as they grow colder, from this point to the 
 sun, then we have still more proof of a good reason, for 
 these conditions which if true, must not conflict with each 
 other. Neither must any known fact conflict with a 
 theory; because if it does, then the theory is not true. 
 
 Now in the case of Neptune, the first evidence of its 
 low temperature is its cold blue color, as shown in the 
 telescope, its immense distance from the sun, its lack of 
 motion, as evinced by its lack of bands. Other first 
 class planets have more and more bands as they become 
 heated. It is also perfectly round and shows no flatten- 
 ing at the poles, as it would if it had a fast axial motion, 
 and was heated. The spectroscope shows it to be com- 
 posed of loose or individual pebbles, dust and sand, and 
 of very low density. 
 
 Uranus shows more heat than Neptune by its green- 
 ish colored disk and by its faster motion. Its pebbles and 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 47 
 
 dust are more condensed, not yet being warm enough for 
 expansion. It travels nearly one hundred thousand miles 
 per day faster on its orbit than Neptune, and rotates on 
 its axis fast enough to show at least one band at its 
 equator and also a slight flattening at the poles. This 
 difference of shape and color shows definitely an increase 
 of temperature over Neptune. Also like Neptune it is 
 shown to be composed of loose pebbles, etc. 
 
 Saturn shows still more heat by its yellowish bands 
 and rapid motion. It is also much more bulky and gas- 
 eous; a condition which further indicates an increase of 
 heat. 
 
 Jupiter shows still more heat by its bright red bands 
 and spots, its immense gaseous bulk and rapid rotation. 
 By its great heat it shows that it must comparatively soon 
 become a molten mass. When it does become hot enough 
 to ignite and burn, it will no doubt make such an immense 
 light that it can be seen for a short time, perhaps as far 
 as our nearest sun; and will then be one of those myster- 
 ious new stars like the new star in the constellation of 
 Perseus in 1901. 
 
 At this point of the return journey (the region of 
 the Asteroids), the next planet seems for some reason to 
 have gone to pieces while in its molten condition, since 
 instead of a large planet we find hundreds of small ones 
 traveling in a great orbit where the large planet should 
 be. From this point on to the sun, each planet becomes 
 cooler and cooler, and its mountains higher as it grows 
 older. 
 
48 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 In the gathering of a new world, we must consider 
 the crystals as having the same motion the atoms of gag 
 had when they left the sun, which was four thousand 
 miles per hour from west to east. When we consider 
 these motions, we see that an atom one mile nearer the 
 sun than an atom a mile farther away would have an 
 orbit two miles less in diameter or six miles less in cir- 
 cumference; and at the completion of an orbit the atom 
 nearer the sun would have gained six miles on the one 
 farther away. We see then, that all matter between us 
 and the sun is passing us (because it is in shorter orbits) 
 and that we are gaining on and passing all that is outside 
 of us. If then, we are on the largest bunch in the zone, 
 we must attract and add all that is passing near us, and 
 also all that we are catching up with. The more we at- 
 tract and add to our bulk and weight, the more we have 
 and the farther we reach out for more on both sides with 
 our unseen fingers of gravity. Finally we must pick up 
 all the atoms of matter on both sides of us for millions 
 of miles. There would be no possibility for little worlds 
 to get away from our big one, because they must either 
 pass us or we must pass them within attracting distance, 
 thousands of times no doubt; so that, sooner or later they 
 must be attracted to us. We are continually approaching 
 nearer the sun, however, gaining speed and getting out of 
 the nebular zone where this world formation goes on. If 
 it were possible for one group of small worlds to form 
 this way, then it would not be possible for one large one 
 to form which would take them all. The fact that there 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 49 
 
 is but one belt of Asteroids in the solar system and that 
 they occupy the proper position for a planet is bona- 
 fide evidence that they are the remains of a great planet 
 which bursted before it radiated to a second class size. If 
 they had formed in a region beyond Neptune, independ- 
 ently of each other, it is not likely that such small bodies 
 (some of them not more than ten miles in diameter) could 
 create the heat by friction necessary to melt them. When 
 the planet exploded, the parts thrown toward the sun 
 greatly increased their speed, while those thrown the 
 other way, or up, lost speed and also were thrown into 
 longer orbits. There was no center of gravity left for the 
 planet as it was distributed by the explosion, and there- 
 fore the ones nearest the sun soon left the others far be- 
 hind. Then it would be but a few thousand years until 
 they would be scattered in a zone around the entire orbit 
 of the planet. No doubt many have attracted each other 
 and come together while the planets and satellites of Ju- 
 piter, Mars and the Earth have attracted others. The 
 planets are so much larger that their great attraction acts 
 against any attempt to form another center. 
 
IV. 
 SATURN. 
 
 When we come again halfway to the sun from 
 Uranus, we find Saturn, one of the most remarkable plan- 
 ets on account of its curious rings. These, however, need 
 not be taken too seriously, as they may be only worn out 
 comets or belts of meteors wrapped around it in short or- 
 bits ; or more likely f ormer moons that have disintegrated 
 and are thus falling to the planet as meteors. Saturn is 
 870,000,000 miles from the sun and makes an orbit in 
 twenty-nine years at the rate of 490,000 miles per day. 
 We must not forget to notice as we go along that each 
 planet as we come in, is traveling about twice as fast 
 as the last one outside of it. We must notice also that 
 they have dropped towards the sun about one-fourth of 
 the diameter of the orbit each time, or halfway to the 
 sun. Here in the case of Saturn we have the details of 
 world making near enough to be better understood, in 
 that degree of development where great heat is generated, 
 by the friction of grinding matter. We must be careful 
 not to confound this mechanical method of heating with 
 the chemical heat produced in the sun by chemical dis- 
 integration of matter. Being 76,000 miles in diameter, 
 it will be seen that in making one rotation on its axis in 
 twenty-four hours, the surface would revolve at the 
 
 50 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 51 
 
 
52 THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 equator at the rate of 9,600 miles per hour. The surface 
 however, travels much faster and is credited with making 
 a rotation in ten hours and fifty-five minutes. To illus- 
 trate why the first class planets, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn 
 and Jupiter rotate faster and faster as they come in to- 
 wards the sun and hecome hotter and hotter at the same 
 time, let us consider them as great electric machines (elec- 
 tricity is but a slower vibration of heat), exalting their 
 own motion as they rotate their outside shells or second 
 ary helix, and turn to a description of the Siemens and 
 Wheatstone machine, which is officially described as 
 follows : 
 
 Expressed generally this discovery consists in exalting by means of 
 its own action to a high degree of intensity an infinitesimal amount of 
 magnetism. Conceive an electrical magnetic core, with a very small 
 amount of residue magnetism, which is never wholly absent when iron 
 has once been magnetized. Let a secondary coil with cores of soft iron 
 rotate before the poles of such a magnet. Exceedingly feeble induced 
 currents will circulate in the secondary coil. Let these induced currents, 
 instead of being carried away, be sent around the electrical magnet 
 which produced them and its magnetism will thereby be exalted. It 
 is then in condition to produce stronger currents. These being also 
 sent around the magnet, its power rises still higher; a more copiously 
 produced current is the result. Thus by a series of interactions between 
 the electrical magnet and the secondary helix, each in turn exalting 
 the other, the electrical magnet is raised from a state of almost 
 perfect neutrality to one of intense magnetization. 
 
 This shows how these big planets increase their ro- 
 tary speed from Neptune to Jupiter as we have seen they 
 do, and thus become more and more heated as they grind 
 their loose mass of matter, causing the friction which 
 finally melts them. 
 
 The outside of Saturn's rings travels at the rate of 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 53 
 
 30,000 miles per hour; and Clerk Maxwell, an English 
 scientist, has shown by the spectroscope that they are 
 composed of myriads of small matter and pebbles, too 
 small to be seen individually, even by our largest tele- 
 scopes. Dr. Keller afterwards proved this by using photo- 
 graphs of spectroscopic observations. He showed that 
 the outer edges of the rings travel faster than the inside 
 edges; thus giving a grinding motion which also proves 
 they are not solid. This motion would cause heat when 
 applied to a planet of loose material, which the first class 
 planets are. 
 
 A majority of astronomers now agree that Saturn is 
 in a more or less heated condition, and that the placid 
 clouds in which the planet is enveloped, hide the heat 
 within. However, the ball does not show nearly so much 
 commotion as that of Jupiter, which has been grinding 
 400,000,000 years longer. 
 
 Saturn has nine moons which are traveling around it 
 from west to east, almost on the plane of its equator, while 
 at Jupiter, 400,000,000 years later, they are exactly in 
 place; and traveling on the plane of the sun's equator, or 
 on the ecliptic of the solar system. The rings of Saturn 
 are very thin, and estimated to be not more than one 
 hundred miles thick and cannot be seen with a small tele- 
 scope when turned edgewise to us. Gallileo, who dis- 
 covered them, supposed they had fallen to the planet 
 when they afterwards turned edgewise. They did not 
 turn back during his lifetime and he died in that belief. 
 The inside ring appears to be nearing the planet, as meas- 
 
54 THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 urements taken by Gallileo show, when compared with 
 the present time. Changes would naturally take place 
 quickly, as there must be continual friction and collision 
 so that they would fall faster than as if their falling speed 
 was not interfered with. As moons obey the same law in 
 falling to their planets, which planets obey in falling to 
 the sun, it is possible that these rings may be the rem- 
 nants of a disintegrated moon as described hereinafter 
 by William Plotts. The next favorable time to observe 
 the rings at their greatest inclination will be in 1914, 
 when they will be inclined twenty-eight degrees from our 
 line of vision. 
 
 Belts are seen around the ball of Saturn almost to its 
 poles. It is only one-eighth as dense as the earth, which 
 is another proof of its heated but unmelted condition. 
 When it becomes hot enough to melt by friction it will 
 then be as dense as the earth, the friction and heating 
 will cease, radiation and cooling will commence, but it 
 still has 400,000,000 years to grind and heat, before it 
 reaches the position and heat that Jupiter shows now. 
 
 Saturn was the most remote planet known to the an- 
 cients. On account of its great distance from us, it shines 
 with a feeble tho steady light, which distinguishes it 
 from the suns in space. It is smaller than Jupiter because 
 it has not heated so much by the friction of its rotating 
 and grinding matter. It has nine satellites or moons, the 
 farthest being 2,225,000 miles from the planet. It re- 
 volves around the sun at a distance of 872,000,000 miles 
 and requires about twenty-nine years to complete its 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 55 
 
 orbit. The light and heat of the sun at its orbit, is only 
 one-hundredth part as great as at the earth; therefore it 
 makes little difference whether it is day or night, or win- 
 ter or summer. The axis is inclined thirty degrees from 
 perpendicular; and the seasons are therefore about the 
 same in proportion as those of the earth. 
 
 William Plotts, the famous oil expert and discoverer 
 of oil fields at Whittier, California, a thinker of extra- 
 ordinary capacity (as may be seen by his successful reas- 
 oning in discovering oil fields worth millions of dollars 
 for himself and companies), says in Higher Science for 
 March, 1904: 
 
 * * * Now I do not take much stock in violent crashing of 
 worlds together in space. The deposition of a planet on its superior is, 
 no doubt, as deliberate as the other evolutions of these bodies and 
 would be so slow that a man could not note any change in his 1 lifetime; 
 and many forms of life would have time to evolve by natural selection, 
 into adaptation of changed conditions, if, for instance, our moon should 
 be in process of deposition upon the earth, and speaking cosmically, 
 that event is about due. We are familiar with the trick of swinging a 
 bucket of water vertically around our heads to show that the water 
 would remain in the bucket upside down. Now if instead of a bucket 
 of water we substitute a bicycle wheel containing a little water, we 
 find when rapidly revolved, the water distributes itself evenly through 
 the tube, with a tendency to flatten out in line with the hub and if 
 all the gravity of the earth was absent and a globe of metal weighing 
 say one hundred pounds, would take the place of the wheel, it is 
 obvious that the water would take on the form of a thin hollow disk, 
 provided the revolution of the water was just right to balance it. Now 
 we must assume that an advance planet like Mercury or the moon has 
 no cohesive qualities except local gravitation, because the outer crust 
 of the earth where it has cooled has none, being checkered by cleavage 
 caused by the surface cooling faster than the interior, also the faulting 
 and crushing that comes from lateral pressure of the whole crust com- 
 monly ascribed to the shrinking of the earth. As an inferior body 
 
56 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 approaches its superior it gradually loses its local gravity and takes on 
 a tendency to form a thin disk as the water would. The body would 
 probably first separate into two or more parts and if they became far 
 apart in line with the superior globe before extensive disintegration 
 of the parts, they would form two or more disks, one within the other, 
 all revolving as before the separation of the disks into rings. This 
 process would go on until the inner edge of the disk or disks began to 
 be retarded by the superior globe's volatile envelope corresponding to 
 our atmosphere, when the disintegrated matter would descend in the 
 form of meteors, tho not so rapidly as to destroy life to any 
 considerable extent. The most serious feature however, to a life-contain- 
 ing globe like the earth, would be the interference of the rings with 
 the rays' of the sun and perhaps the perplexing conditions ascribed to the 
 "glacial epoch" could be accounted for in this way. 
 
 Same writer in Higher Science magazine for February, 
 1905, says: 
 
 My interpretation of the Heald law of the planetary 
 procession is, that all bodies are falling together as fast as 
 they Dossibly can; or rather, that all minor bodies are falnug 
 toward the sun as fast as they can and will eventually join it; and in 
 compensation a like quantity of matter in an invisible and immensely 
 expanded state swells constantly upwards, condenses and concentrates 
 into new planets, mostly beyond the orbit of known planets. This 
 being the case, and there seems to be no possibility of refuting it, there 
 will be a time when each minor body will be absorbed by its superior. 
 My conception of this process is, that it is as orderly and deliberate as 
 its whole approach to its goal; and that one phase of this process is in 
 full view in the planet Saturn and its rings. * 
 
V. 
 JUPITER. 
 
 Leaving Saturn to its grinding and heating, and 
 coming in once more halfway to the sun from 
 Saturn, we arrive at the greatest of all the planets in 
 size. It is swelled almost beyond recognition as a planet 
 and is surrounded by all the gases and clouds belonging 
 to a stage of great heat; a stage thru which every planet 
 must pass before it can melt into a smaller body and com- 
 mence its task of radiating to the size of a second class 
 planet, and cooling so that it can form a crust and pro- 
 duce life. This it could never do without the melting and 
 condensing which stops the friction of grinding. Neither 
 could gravity separate its elements, which if not separat- 
 ed, could not create the chemical heat in reuniting with 
 the matter of the sun, as they do when separated into 
 their elements. Points on Jupiter's surface travel at 
 great speed; and it is supposed to make a rotation in a 
 little more than nine hours. Of this, however, we cannot 
 be quite certain, as we have only seen the motion of its 
 outside shell as is also the case with all first class planets 
 and the sun. 
 
 Says Prof. James E. Keeler: 
 
 In 1878 there suddenly appeared a pink spot on the surface of 
 Jupiter of unprecedented dimensions; the length is given as 30,000 miles 
 by 7,000 miles broad. In another year it was a full Indian red. So 
 
 57 
 
58 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 completely did it dwarf all other recorded spots that it was henceforth 
 known as "the great red spot." It faded away and was almost invisible 
 in 1883. The time of rotation of the red spot is not the same as the 
 adjacent forms. In 1890 a large spot was moving towards the red 
 spot at the rate of 20 miles per hour. The great red spot was like a 
 bank of sand in a river past which the clouds go scurrying. 
 
 This shows conclusively that the inside of Jupiter 
 does move more slowly than the outside; and many 
 astronomers consider the action of the spots a proof of it. 
 The bright colored bands of Jupiter show it to be a 
 
 Fig. 10. The Planet Jupiter from photograph by Barnard. 
 
 glowing mass almost ready to melt down. When it final- 
 ly does so, and settles down to a much smaller size, the 
 process of radiation will commence at once, and Jupiter 
 will be a bright burning star like the planet that made the 
 Asteroids by its bursting. 
 
 It has been a standing mystery why Neptune,Uranus, 
 Saturn and Jupiter are such monsters in size when com- 
 pared with Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury; but it seems 
 very simple that they must melt and radiate to a reason- 
 able size, before they become cool enough to form a 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 59 
 
 crust. Jupiter will be almost a small sun when he finally 
 bursts into flames; but he will not reach the present orbit 
 of Mars for 800,000,000 years where he can cool, form a 
 crust and commence to evolve life. He is the great giant 
 among planets now, but each one as it reaches his present 
 orbit will be the great giant. Saturn is following; and 
 when he has become melted and is radiating his bulk- 
 away, Saturn will be the great giant, its rings and some 
 of its moons will be added to the melting mass, Uranus 
 will be in Saturn's place, Neptune will be in the place of 
 Uranus and a monstrous blue, cold cloud of sand, stones 
 and crystals will come in sight as a new world just show- 
 ing its motions and its comet moons probably revolving 
 backwards in their orbits. 
 
 Jupiter is the nearest of the large planets and is 483,- 
 000,000 miles from the sun. On account of its great dis- 
 tance from the sun when compared to the earth, it pre- 
 sents no visible change of phase; always appearing full, 
 almost the same as if we were at the sun. This also ap- 
 plies to all the planets more remote. The volume of Jupi 
 ter is about one and a half times all the others in mass. 
 Its rapidity of rotation produces a sensible oblateness, 
 its ellipticity is so considerable a deviation from the 
 spherical form that it is perceptible to the eye without 
 measurement. The orbit of Jupiter is nearly in the plane 
 of the ecliptic and has an eccentricity of one-twentieth, 
 which is three times that of the earth's orbit. The 
 equator is inclined three degrees to the plane of its orbit; 
 
60 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 so there is no perceptible change of seasons, even if there 
 were sunlight enough to make seasons. 
 
 Belts of Jupiter are the bands or stripes of darker 
 shade than the rest of the disk stretching across it in the 
 direction of its rotation. They vary from time to time 
 in number and width, sometimes covering a large part 
 of the surface. The belt usually appears of uniform 
 width entirely across the disk, but not always. Occasion- 
 ally its edge is broken and often much wider in one part 
 than another. The change of breadth is quite abrupt, 
 thereby revealing the rotation of the planet. 
 
 Jupiter has seven satellites; the farthest one from 
 the planet being 4,228,000 miles distant ; four of them are 
 large enough to be seen with a good field glass and one 
 of them large enough to be seen with the naked eye, from 
 mountain heights of Southern California. On account 
 of the great size of Jupiter and its shadow, and the small 
 inclination between its own orbit and the orbits of its 
 satellites, most of the moons of Jupiter are eclipsed at 
 every revolution when on the opposite side of the sun, 
 while they usually eclipse Jupiter itself, in passing 
 between it and the sun. These eclipses are occurring 
 almost daily. When Jupiter is eclipsed by one of its 
 moons, we see only a dark spot going across its disk. The 
 velocity of light was first discovered by observing these 
 eclipses. Eoemer noticed that as the planet and the 
 earth were receding, the time of the small moon, I, did not 
 come as soon as it should; and in wondering why it was 
 so, he concluded it took light that much more time to 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 61 
 
 travel the extra distance. So he watched the eclipses 
 until the two planets began to approach each other again, 
 when sure enough, the time began to shorten and the 
 eclipses came too soon. From this he soon calculated the 
 speed of light. 
 
 Astronomers accredit Jupiter with a red atmosphere. 
 No doubt it has a fiery gas under the carbonaceous clouds 
 that partially hide its great smothered heat; and people 
 will think the inferno has broken out again, if any are 
 alive when the smothered flames of Jupiter can no longer 
 be hidden under the blankets of carbon and it bursts out 
 into a blazing mass of fire. The great red spot may have 
 been a moon which had been revolving around Jupiter, 
 under its clouds of carbon, and which was too small to 
 be seen till it fell into the more solid interior of the 
 planet and received enough heat from it to make a red 
 color. Some astronomers explain the so-called red atmos- 
 phere to be due to sunlight effects on its clouds. They 
 forget that the planet is five times as far from the sun as 
 the earth, and that sunlight there would be a very small 
 matter indeed. 
 
 Summing up all the evidence in sight, we find Jupiter 
 hotter and more expanded than any other planet in the 
 system. Saturn following him, is heating, Mars before 
 him is cooling; so that, at some point between Jupiter's 
 orbit and the orbit of Mars, is the point of greatest heat 
 as we have seen, where the worlds melt as they come in. 
 Also as we have seen, and as the spectroscope and tele- 
 scope plainly show, up to this time they have been grow- 
 
62 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 ing warmer. While they were heating, they were also 
 swelling in volume, as well as having considerable stray 
 matter added to their bulk as they generated heat, electric 
 and magnetic currents and power. They have rotated 
 faster, and at the same time they have traveled faster on 
 their orbits as they have dropped towards the sun, till now 
 we find Jupiter traveling at the rate of 690,000 miles per 
 day. Saturn makes a revolution on its axis in ten hours 
 and fourteen minutes, while Jupiter, altho many thousand 
 miles larger in circumference makes a revolution in nine 
 hours and fifty-five minutes* We do not know the time in 
 which Uranus rotates, but we know it is much less than 
 that required by Neptune. This is proved by the faint 
 band around Uranus. So, we see that, more and more 
 they become great electric heat-dynamoes, as they come 
 in, till they reach the present orbit of Jupiter which must 
 be near the melting point. The sum of the evidence is 
 patent to all: as the planets grind away thru the million 
 ages, they generate by friction, the heat and electricity 
 which finally melts them down. Then, their increasing 
 electrical and heat motions being no longer augmented, 
 cease; and the mass gradually settles back to the rotary 
 motion of the inside matter of the planet, which, as we 
 have already seen, is the inherent motion of all matter as, 
 in the form of expanded gas, it comes from the sun's 
 equator. 
 
VI. 
 THE ASTEROIDS. 
 
 Coming in this time halfway from Jupiter to the 
 sun, which point, as we have seen, should be the orbit of 
 a planet, we find signs of the celestial catastrophe be- 
 fore referred to, the scattered remains of a planet; frag- 
 ments of a world, burst in the crucible. Here seems ab- 
 solute proof of its former great heat and rotary motion; 
 because, it would have to be thoroughly melted and con- 
 densed before it could explode, and if it had not been in 
 a molten state when it exploded, the pieces thus far re- 
 vealed to us by telescope, would not be as they are with 
 a few exceptions, in spherical form and smooth, but in all 
 kinds of shapes and chunks. The reason for the excep- 
 tions will be seen as we consider the moons of Asteroid 
 before its explosion and subdivision. 
 
 The contracting theory that these bodies came from 
 a ring of matter left over will not stand the test, because 
 conditions prove them to have been in a molten state 
 when formed, and we can easily see that such small bodies 
 as they are could not of themselves generate sufficient 
 heat to cause the melting. That they would cool very 
 fast is obvious, from the fact of their small size, and 
 judging by their weight, density and size, they must be 
 cooled to the center. They follow the original orbit of 
 
 63 
 
64 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 the planet, as nearly as could be expected, but of course 
 are greatly scattered and strung along the orbit. 
 
 It would be of the greatest interest if we could see 
 this fiery planet in its orbit, unimpaired, as future inhab- 
 itants of the earth will sometime see Jupiter, provided 
 of course, he too does not burst in passing this danger 
 point. No doubt the planet Asteroid (1) would be much 
 smaller than Jupiter, because it would be in the molten 
 state and much of its heat and weight radiated away; yet 
 it would no doubt be much larger than the earth, as it 
 would still have 400,000,000 years to radiate and con- 
 dense, before reaching the present orbit of Mars, where a 
 crust could begin to form. If the original planet still re- 
 mained intact, it would no doubt be a bright burning star 
 in the most interesting stage of its radiation to a planet 
 of the second class. 
 
 The objection that if one planet bursts at the orbit 
 of the asteroids, they should all do the same, is not a 
 necessary conclusion. Its bursting was due in part to its 
 overrate of speed in rotating, induced by the mechani- 
 cally produced overproduction of electrical magnetic 
 energy; and while nature herself makes no mistakes, we 
 know that a machine is always liable to accident. The 
 planets, we see, become at this point great electro-mag- 
 netic machines, liable to accident; but we also see that 
 Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury have all reached and 
 passed this danger point safely. 
 
 There is no legend or story in history of this fiery 
 orb, therefore the accident must have occurred more than 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 65 
 
 thirty-five thousand years ago. Perhaps if archaeologists 
 continue to find old cities beneath the almost mythical 
 city of Nipur, they may yet find some reference to it, inas- 
 much as it must have been a very prominent feature of 
 the sky, having almost the appearance of a small sun for 
 at least two years out of seven, and would have been the 
 third celestial attraction while it lasted. 
 
 In order to throw all the light possible on this inter- 
 esting procession of planets, we must consider for a 
 moment, what might have become of the four moons due 
 to this unfortunate body at the time of its bursting. 
 We must also see that as moons are always smaller, there- 
 fore cooler than a planet, the nearest moon of Asteroid 
 might be broken in the explosion. Eros, the nearest 
 asteroid to the earth of any known, isi only a fragment of 
 a larger body. It has corners where its different faces 
 meet at angles, and shows regularly alternating bright- 
 ness as it rotates every five hours and twenty minutes. 
 There are also a number of other fragments, as there 
 should be, if a moon was destroyed in the accident. Its 
 nearest moon, of which Eros was undoubtedly a part, was 
 probably between it and the sun at the time of the ac- 
 cident and was broken to pieces and thrown towards the 
 sun. All the asteroids that are not spheres have the apex 
 of their orbits this side of the center of the belt of Aster- 
 oids. It has been discovered within the last two years 
 that one of the asteroids is almost the size of our own 
 moon and that there are several larger than the greater 
 moon of Mars. No doubt these asteroids are really the 
 
66 THE PKOCE8SION OF PLANETS 
 
 moons that once followed that unfortunate body. We 
 may be quite sure that at least three moons are in some 
 part of the orbital path of the asteroids between Mars 
 and Jupiter; and these larger bodies may be the moons 
 wanted as witnesses. Perhaps there may be billions of 
 these asteroids that can never be seen from the earth as 
 they are 100,000,000 miles from it on an average at the 
 nearest point, and five times as far, a part of the time. 
 Eros, the nearest known asteroid to the earth, will come 
 as close as 19,000,000 miles in 1924. Its orbit is an elipse 
 and at times is far inside of Mars. Being so small (only 
 20 miles in diameter), it is easily influenced out of its 
 orbit by the planets and is liable to be picked up some- 
 time by Mars, as it must cross the orbit of Mars in every 
 trip round the sun. Eros is expected to furnish an exact 
 basis of measurement by which to correct distances of all 
 celestial bodies, because it is so small that its exact posi- 
 tion within a few feet can be taken at any time. 
 
 The asteroids, like Neptune, were discovered by 
 means of mathematical calculations, coupled with theory 
 and reason. In 1772 Titus found that the following ratio 
 would represent thei approximate positions of the planets 
 from the sun. Representing the earth's distance by ten, 
 he found the following ratio by theory and fact: 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 67 
 
 Planet Ratio Theory. Fact. 
 
 Mercury 0+4 4 5.9 
 
 Venus 3+4 7 7.2 
 
 Earth ,,.,6+4 10 10.0 
 
 Mars 12+4 16 15.2 
 
 Asteroids 24+4 ., 28 28.5 
 
 Jupiter 48+4 52 ...52.0 
 
 Saturn 96+4 100 95.4 
 
 Neither Uranus nor Neptune had been discovered at 
 that time, but when Uranus was discovered and found 
 to reasonably conform to the same ratio, this gap be- 
 tween Jupiter and Mars made such an impression on 
 Bodie, the great Berlin astronomer, that he undertook 
 the task of finding the missing planet. 
 
 It was, however, twenty years before Piazzi, a Sicil- 
 ician astronomer, discovered the first asteroid, Ceres. 
 Since that*' time theyt have been discovered almost nightly, 
 by cameras which were set for them. Vesta, one of the 
 asteroids is visible to> the naked eye and altho it is not the 
 largest it is the brightest. The diameters of the four 
 largest of these tiny worlds discovered prior to 1845 are 
 as follows: 
 
 Ceres 480 miles in diameter. 
 Pallas 304 miles in diameter. 
 Vesta 243 miles in diameter. 
 Juno 118 miles in diameter. 
 
 They cannot be distinguished by the telescope from 
 faint fixed stars, except by their motion. They are gen- 
 erally too small to show a sensible disk and cannot be 
 
68 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS . 
 
 measured with any certainty. It is estimated by the 
 slight disturbing influence that they exert that their en- 
 tire mass is equal to only a fraction of the earth. This 
 however is because each one acts independently for itself; 
 and their entire mass might easily be larger than the 
 earth. The eccentricity of most of them is greater than 
 that of any of the eight planets. The obliquity of the 
 planet Hebe, is fourteen degrees and that of Pallas is 
 thirty-four degrees, the greatest yet discovered. The or- 
 bits vary considerably in size and therefore the periodic 
 times are various; but as they are generally quite eccen- 
 tric, every one is nearer the sun at perihelion, than any 
 other one is at aphelion. The orbits are therefore all 
 linked together and pass thru each other. Thus they are 
 regarded as moving amongst each other around the sun 
 within the limits of a ring, the breadth of which in its 
 radius vector is more than one hundred million miles. 
 Flora, which moves in the smallest orbit yet discovered, 
 performs its revolutions dn; three and one-fourth years; 
 while Cybele, the most remote, requires six and one-half 
 years. 
 
VII. 
 MARS. 
 
 Once more halfway to the sun from the Asteroids 
 we find Mars the red planet of war. Having safely pass- 
 ed the bursting point in the procession of planets, it is 
 now in the act of cooling and forming its crust. It is 
 receiving its atmosphere and water, which its own heat 
 has more than likely been holding at a distance for hun- 
 dreds of millions of years, since it began to melt in the 
 vicinity of Jupiter and it is now almost ready to produce 
 and support life, which the laws of evolution will surely 
 bring. It has already received its motions in the great 
 mass of blue crystals which formed it so many million 
 years ago up on the border of our planetary system. We 
 can already see snow at the poles of Mars, at such times 
 as they are turned from the sun. The winters are twice 
 as long as our own; but the fact that there are only small 
 caps of snow at the poles, where the sun does not shine 
 for a year at a time, must convince us that it is very hot 
 within itself. If there was no more heat in the planet 
 than the earth, it should be at least half covered with 
 snow continually; because it is twice as far from the sun 
 as we are, and its winters are twice as long. Its color 
 also seems to indicate great heat. 
 
 When a planet melts of course the friction of grind- 
 
 69 
 
70 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 ing material ceases and the generation of electric energy 
 or heat stops; then it must at once commence to cool by 
 the slow ^process of radiation. After millions of years 
 of radiation and reduction in size, it would become cool 
 enough to form a crust or temporary crusts, like thin ice 
 
 Fig. 11. The Planet Mars, from a drawing by Lowell. 
 
 over a pond which might become checked or cracked, 
 time after time, perhaps. The contracting of the cooling 
 crust in the early stages of crust formation might cause 
 great crevices , and these crevices give rise to the many 
 speculations indulged in by astronomers, concerning the 
 checked appearance of Mars. Some astronomers contend 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 71 
 
 that Mars must be inhabited because these curious lines 
 look somewhat like irrigation ditches. Sir Kobert Ball, 
 the English astronomer, says they are undoubtedly arti- 
 ficial because nature never makes straight lines. This is 
 a mistake, because nature always makes straight lines 
 when cooling or crystallizing. Prof. Baumgardt of Los 
 Angeles, in his lectures on astronomy shows a glass globe 
 which while very hot, was suddenly cooled. This globe 
 gives very much the appearance of Mars, being checkered 
 and cracked in straight lines. The earth seems to have 
 great crevices extending sometimes for hundreds of miles. 
 There is an apparent crevice running thru San Diego 
 county, fifteen miles from northwest to southeast, from 
 which minerals have been deposited in the strata above. 
 This belt at the surface is about one-half mile wide; and 
 whenever a ledge crosses it, it is mineral bearing. The 
 shoots of ore on the southwest side pitch to the northeast 
 and vice versa, showing that this crevice must be at least 
 two thousand feet below. Almost any old prospector can 
 mention hundreds of these mineral belts. Nature seems 
 to make curved lines only by heating and straight lines 
 by cooling. 
 
 The most reasonable explanation of the so-called 
 Martian canals is that they were made by the great rush 
 of water from the polar regions. It is still more reason- 
 able when we remember that the surface of Mars is flat 
 and smooth, not having cooled enough to have raised 
 any mountains. It is receiving its water as snow at its 
 poles ; and when this melts, of course, it flows towards the 
 equator washing deep channels until it is evaporated 
 
72 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 again in the hot regions near the equator into steam, to 
 again fall at the poles as snow. Thus we can perceive 
 how these canals may be made by this endless round of 
 water, flowing but one way in a land which is as yet al- 
 most a level plane, with probably little or no crust form- 
 ed at the equatorial regions. No doubt the planet is much 
 cooler than the earth was at the same position in space, 
 because being so much smaller, it must have cooled much 
 faster than the earth. Having cooled so much faster 
 on account of its small size, Mars may be in a condition 
 to support life at an earlier period or position than the 
 earth was, provided the greater distance from the sun 
 and the smaller amount of light does not interfere. 
 
 If it is possible that, on account of its pygmy size, 
 Mars is in advance of the earth with regard to cooling, 
 when at the same orbital age, the life forms it could sup- 
 port must still be of a very primitive kind. There are in- 
 numerable theories regarding Mars and the probability of 
 its being inhabited, but these guesses are based on the 
 belief that it is millions of years older than the earth; 
 a popular fallacy without reasonable foundation. The 
 density of a planet, as of all other natural formations, 
 must tell its age. It is the work of gravity that produces 
 the effects of age and it is as easy to observe the age of a 
 planet, as of a man, by simply looking at it. Moun- 
 tains are the wrinkles showing the age of a planet, a 
 man or any other object of natural formation. 
 
 Mars appears to be a pygmy amongst the planets 
 and his moons are pygmy moons, for which there is some 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 73 
 
 good reason that mathematicians should be able to show. 
 There may have been less material within reach, when 
 Mars was being collected by the force of gravity, or, the 
 planet comprising the Asteroids may have, by gravity, 
 stolen part of the matter that belonged in his belt. One 
 thing is quite evident; he was never as large as an ordi- 
 nary planet, because his moons are pygmies, proportion- 
 ed in size to himself. Being so small at the start, him- 
 self, he could only attract from a narrow belt according 
 to the law of gravity described by the old maxim, i l Unto 
 him that hath shall be given and to him that hath not, 
 shall be taken away even that which he hath. ' ' If, away 
 out in the regions of world-gathering, little Mars should 
 be smaller than Asteroid, outside of him, and the earth, 
 this side of him, we can readily see that they would at- 
 tract farther and stronger and so rob him on both sides, 
 of material that belonged in his legitimate zone. The 
 first life generated on a cooling planet would be governed 
 by conditions and would be plant life. From this it must 
 slowly evolve and for millions of years the poisons of 
 its low swamps and rotting vegetation would not permit 
 any higher types of life than serpents. On our own earth 
 the records in the rocks show that even birds were ser- 
 pentine during all the first stages of animal life, when 
 there were no mountains and when vegetation, aided in 
 its growth by the inner heat of the earth, was of such 
 enormous size and quantity. 
 
 Almost all astronomers, basing their views on the 
 Nebular Theory, believe the planet Mars to be older than 
 
74 THE PROCESSION OP PLANETS 
 
 the earth. If however, the Processional Theory is correct, 
 as all the facts and figures prove, it exactly reverses the 
 order of the age of planets, making Mars the next young- 
 er than Earth. The Processional Theory seems to afford 
 the only means for accounting for many hitherto unex- 
 plained conditions such as, the speed of light, sun spots 
 and explosions, temperatures of the planets, shortening of 
 orbits, the rings of Saturn, positions of the planets in the 
 solar system, the plane of the ecliptic, the formation of 
 the new star in the constellation of Perseus, Professor 
 Lebedu's "outward pressure of light," the ceaseless 
 motion of matter, mental and wireless telegraphy, the 
 reason Venus has no moons, how celestial bodies gain 
 speed, how new worlds are formed, the existence of "ring 
 mountains ' ' on the Moon and hundreds of other facts in 
 nature, the solar system and stellar universe, which no 
 other theory or hypothesis can explain and prove by fig- 
 ures. No other theory can explain why a new planet just 
 forming in space, must take the motion of an orbit around 
 the sun from west to east. 
 
 Getting back over the ground somewhat, let us look a 
 little closer for more evidence that Mars is younger than 
 the earth: We are quite sure that the earth has at one 
 time been a ball of fire and thereafter became sufficiently 
 cooled to produce life. Now if the earth were younger 
 than Mars, it would of course be older than Venus; and 
 so Venus must then be hotter than the earth and Mars 
 cooler. We actually find, however, that Venus is cooler 
 than the earth (which certainly proves it to be older) and 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 75 
 
 that Mars is hotter than the earth, which also proves it 
 to be younger. As a molten planet cools it must form a 
 crust; and as the crust thickens, the planet contracts and 
 mountains necessarily rise upon the surface. They could 
 not do so on a planet that had no crust, nor on a 
 planet with a very thin crust. What, then, is evi- 
 dent when we compare these three planets in respect 
 to mountains! First, we find Mars, 141,000,000 miles 
 from the sun, with absolutely no mountains; almost a 
 level plane with the exception of what are called its 
 inland seas. It has not and can have no large in- 
 land seas until its crust is thick enough to contract and 
 form mountains and its water can fall to the surface and 
 gather into large bodies. Next we find the earth (93,000,- 
 000 miles from the sun) with mountains as high as 30,- 
 000 feet and a crust not yet thick enough to confine all 
 its inside molten matter. Its oceans are connected around 
 its entire sphere. Next we find Venus (65,000,000 miles 
 from the sun) with mountains estimated by fairly correct 
 measurements of their shadows, to be 142,000 feet in 
 height. How could these three conditions exist if Venus 
 was younger than the earth, and the earth younger than 
 Mars! They could not. If the earth were gradually be- 
 coming hotter, then this would be the case; but every- 
 thing goes to prove, and all science agrees that from a 
 molten state, millions of years ago, it has cooled to its 
 present degree of density. 
 
 Mars also shows by melting of its snow so quickly 
 after its long winter, that it is much hotter than the earth. 
 It has but one-fifth as much sunlight as we have on the 
 
76 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 earth and its winters are twice as long as ours ; yet for all 
 this, we find but small caps of snow at its winter poles, as, 
 alternately, each is turned from the sun for a whole year. 
 This condition could not be, if its crust were not thin and 
 * its molten matter near the surface. No doubt if Mars 
 were a full sized planet, it would still be almost, if not 
 entirely devoid of crust; but being so small, it has actu- 
 ally cooled faster than it would have done, if of the usual 
 size. In the cooling of the Asteroids we see the same 
 principles illustrated and worked out. (The number of 
 moons of this and other planets, is another important 
 factor bearing on this matter of proof, which will be con- 
 sidered in another chapter.) 
 
 The very color of Mars, indicates recent heat. It is 
 of an ocher or burned brick color. The "red planet of 
 war" being so much younger than the earth as to have not 
 yet raised a mountain range, could not very well produce 
 other than a low order of vegetable life forms from which 
 all higher life must evolve during the hundreds of mil- 
 lions of years required to reduce its orbit to the size of 
 Earth's orbit, at which time its internal heat will have 
 become so radiated that it may have a thick crust, moun- 
 tain ranges, open seas, plenty of sunlight, seasons the 
 length of our own and other conditions necessary to 
 sustain human and other life as we have upon the earth 
 now. 
 
 Light signals coming from the earth could never be 
 seen at Mars even if it were possible for the planet to 
 support human beings capable of speaking the English 
 language and using as good astronomical instruments as 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 77 
 
 we use on earth. This has been shown by Prof. Larkin 
 of Mt. Lowe. 
 
 In the cut we represent Mars in four positions in his 
 orbit around the sun and showing his nearest approach 
 to the earth (47,000,000 miles) which happens when both 
 planets are on the same side of the sun. At this time the 
 
 Fig. 12. 
 
 dark side of the earth is presented to Mars when it is 
 midday at Mars. This gives but little chance that any 
 possible inhabitants of Mars could receive signals from 
 the earth. Conditions at other times are almost the same 
 except that the two planets are farther from each other; 
 the greatest distance being 237,000,000 miles when on 
 opposite sides of the sun. Mars does, however, exhibit 
 
78 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 small phases at 2 and 4, supposing the earth should re- 
 main at the position in the cut. Such conditions occur 
 but a short time twice a year; so, we can but rarely get 
 a glimpse of a small portion of the dark side. 
 
 As Mars revolves in an orbit outside of the earth's 
 orbit, it can come into opposition to the sun, as well as 
 into conjunction with it; appearing at every degree from 
 to 180. 
 
 Mars is blessed with two moons; Demis the largest 
 is 12,900 miles from the planet's surface, while Phobus, 
 the innermost, is but 3,000 miles distant; and makes a rev- 
 olution around the planet in seven and one-half hours, 
 or three times while Mars is turning once on its axis. 
 For that reason Phobus has the distinction of rising in 
 the west and setting in the east. Both these moons are 
 dead moons, having turned their magnetic poles to the 
 planet. There is every reason to believe that within a 
 few centuries, this little satellite, Phobus, will have ended 
 his long journey by plunging thru the thin crust, into 
 the molten matter of Mars; or, by attaining such a swift 
 speed that centrifugal force, opposing the force of grav- 
 ity, will take away his own center of gravity and allow 
 him to disintegrate into a belt or ring of meteors which 
 will gradually fall to his surface or be burned in his 
 atmosphere. A perceptible shortening of his orbit should 
 be measured in a few decades. 
 
 The discovery of the moons of Mars was predicted 
 by Voltaire, Kepler and Swift, who calculate the ratio of 
 moons from Saturn to Venus. The number of moons fol- 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 79 
 
 lowing a planet, makes, of itself, a most interesting study, 
 well calculated to set an inquiring mind at work in earn- 
 est, when considered in connection with the Processional 
 Theory. The further and still more astonishing fact, that 
 they always obey the same law of ratio, both as to ap- 
 proach and speed, that the planets show, in approaching 
 the sun, gives another volume of evidence to still more 
 overwhelmingly prove the law of a procession of planets 
 to be correct. 
 
vin. 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 The next planet, also in its proper place, halfway 
 between Mars and the sun, is our own Mother Earth, 
 perhaps in the very prime of her motherhood. Prof. 
 Isaac N. Vail, in his excellent work, The Story of the 
 Rocks, gives both Saturn and Jupiter younger dates than 
 the earth. He does not attempt to show why, or give 
 reasons for the position in space, but goes on to show and 
 give proofs that, long eons ago, the earth has passed the 
 stages thru which they are passing now. 
 
 Altho the earth is only half as far from the sun as 
 Mars, and the winters only half as long, it has many times 
 more snow at its winter poles. The snow sometimes 
 reaches its tropical lines, covering the temperate and 
 frigid zones, while Mars has only a small cap of snow 
 around its Artie and Antartic circles during winters 
 twice as long as ours. This proves beyond the posibility 
 of a doubt that Mars has much more internal heat than 
 the earth. 
 
 That the earth has been much hotter than it is now, 
 is plainly shown by the historical records which nature 
 and time have faithfully written upon the rocks of its 
 
 80 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 81 
 
 crust, without sentiment, fear or favor. (Reference may 
 be had to any good geology or encyclopedia, as there is 
 no disagreement among scientists upon this point.) It 
 is evident by the construction of the fire rocks, that at 
 the time they were first hardened, there was no water 
 on the face of the earth. No doubt it was held suspended 
 or pushed up to a certain distance in the form of vapor, 
 by the force of heat and that it fell only after the force 
 of heat had sufficiently subsided to make it possible for 
 the force of gravity to condense it and bring it down, first 
 at the winter poles where the force of heat was the weak- 
 est. Professor VaiPs Annual Theory of the falling of 
 snows and vapors first at the poles would not be in oppo- 
 sition, therefore, to nature and would be in line with the 
 Processional Theory which, after the old and new laws 
 governing it have all been examined in every part and de- 
 tail, presents such a perfect chain of evidence of its truth. 
 Another fact proving the previously molten condi- 
 tion of the earth is that in very deep mines there is a 
 regular increase of temperature from the surface down- 
 ward. This seems to be almost universal testimony 
 wherever men have sunk shafts or bored wells to great 
 depths. In some mines it is almost impossible to perform 
 labor on account of the heat. There are many other 
 reasons for believing the earth has been a molten mass; 
 mountain ranges are caused by its contraction as the 
 cooling process goes on and the great mountain ranges 
 or " wrinkles " seen near almost every coast line show 
 where the weight of waters gathered in oceans and seas, 
 assist in pressing the crust into these wrinkles or ranges. 
 
82 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 In volcanoes we find another proof. Many hundreds of 
 these in various parts of the earth still act as vent holes 
 or safety valves opening down into the molten center to 
 allow the escape of gases and liquid lava when the cool- 
 ing and contracting increases the pressure on the molten 
 mass. Yet, with all these safety openings, when Mother 
 Earth shivers and draws her blanket closer over her 
 shoulders, while hastening onward toward the sun from 
 which she came, thousands of lives are lost in the topp- 
 
 Fig. 13. Grand Canyon of the Co! o rad 6 j show-rag 1 st 
 feet thick. 
 
 ling buildings erected by man, and other thousands are 
 buried beneath the lava forced out in the volcanic regions, 
 by the closer pressing crust. 
 
 Judging by the time it has taken the sedimentary rocks 
 to form and by the depth of the drift covering the first 
 implements showing the handiwork of man, the very 
 earliest and most crude human-like creatures could not 
 have existed more than a few hundred thousand years 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 83 
 
 ago. If the record of the stars could have been kept from 
 the very birth of man's intellect to the present time, 
 there would probably be very little perceptible change in 
 them so vast is the difference between 400,000,000 years, 
 the estimated time between the birth of planets and 
 100,000 years the estimated time since human life began 
 on the earth. 
 
 There are many treatises on what is usually known as 
 the glacial epoch, that would make profitable reading 
 for the student who would follow it and study the Pro- 
 cessional Theory. Among the best of these, perhaps, is 
 the work of Prof. John Fiske, called the "Journeys of 
 an Evolutionist," and various other works referred to 
 by him. The glacial epoch was undoubtedly caused by 
 the cooling of the earth first at the poles, where it was 
 coldest and where it was in darkness of winter twelve 
 months instead of six as now. When the earth was 
 near or where Mars is now, the water if there was any, 
 first made its appearance as snow in the winter months 
 and as rain in the summer months. No doubt when one 
 of these long winters broke up and the winter pole was 
 again turned towards the sun for a year, the sun's heat, 
 assisted by the internal fires would cause a melting of 
 snow and rushing of waters to the south, a filling of 
 canals and hissing of steam as it hurried on toward the 
 equatorial regions. We point to Mars as proof of this 
 altho as we have already shown, Mars on account of its 
 small size, must be considerably in advance of an ordi- 
 nary sized planet in cooling. 
 
 The reason why a celestial body moves at all, is be- 
 cause it is falling towards its superior. This can be 
 
84 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 easily shown by the motion of every satellite, planet, 
 comet, sun or other celestial body. In the case of the 
 earth we see it varies in speed at different partions of 
 its orbit, falling faster when nearest the sun. When 
 passing from the vernal equinox to aphelion, the far- 
 thest point from the sun, the attraction of the sun tends 
 to check its speed; from that point to the autumnal 
 equinox, the attraction being in the direction of its mo- 
 tion, the velocity is increased. The same principle ap- 
 plies when going to and from perihelion, the point nearest 
 to the sun. 
 
 It is perfectly simple that every direction from the 
 sun is up, until that part of space is reached where some 
 other sun would be nearer or larger and so have u great- 
 er pulling force or attraction; except, locally at planets 
 or satellites that have their own temporary centers of 
 gravity while on their way around and to their supe- 
 riors. The law of gravity discovered by Newton, should 
 prove to any person of intelligence, that tha sun being 
 hundreds of thousands of times larger than any one of 
 its family of planets, must have the superior attraction 
 and the fact that the planets travel around it in an orbit, 
 also shows that at any and every point in their orbits, 
 it is drawing them towards it which necessarily makes it 
 down from every point of the orbit of a body traveling 
 or falling around it. If the planets were not falling to- 
 ward the sun, they would stop. There is absolutely no 
 other force to make them travel. Instead of stopping 
 they continually increase their speed as they near the 
 sun. This we prove by comparing the speed of Neptune, 
 250,000 miles per day, with the speed of Mercury; Mer- 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 85 
 
 cury in its fall has gained ten times the speed it had 
 when at Neptune's orbit; and now travels at the rate of 
 2,500,000 miles per day. More than this, each planet 
 from Neptune to the sun travels faster at a regular ratio 
 exactly in proportion as it approaches the sun. (See table 
 showing each planet, its distance from the sun and its 
 speed along its orbit.) 
 
 The same law applies to the satellites of which a planet 
 is a temporary center. Locally, of course, the center of 
 the earth is down; at least as far out into space as the 
 moon's orbit and we know the people on the other side 
 of the earth stand with their feet down which is with 
 the soles toward our feet when standing. The sun, how- 
 ever is 1,300,000 times as large as the earth ; therefore the 
 earth 's local center of gravity is a small space when com- 
 pared with the center of gravity for the whole solar 
 system. See diagram. 
 
 There is another sure proof that the planets fall to- 
 ward the sun and that, therefore, it is down from all the 
 planets. This is illustrated in the cut showing an ex- 
 aggerated eliptic orbit of the earth around the sun and 
 which takes us 3,000,000 miles nearer the sun at one end 
 of its orbit (perihelion), than at the other end or aphel- 
 ion. When the earth is at the farthest end of its orbit, 
 it is traveling at its lowest rate of speed, because it has 
 left the sun 3,000,000 miles farther than at perihelion or, 
 gone 3,000,000 miles farther up. Then as it travels the 
 next six months back to the perihelion it has neared or 
 fallen towards the sun 3,000,000 miles, gaining speed ac- 
 cordingly. When it passes its perihelion it is gradually 
 going away from the sun for six months, and so travels 
 
6 THE PROCESSION OF 
 
 slower and slower, just as a ball thrown into the air does 
 until it reaches the perihelion curve, turns and begins to 
 fall. All these proofs of a real up and down in the 
 solar system are shown by time, speed, length of orbits 
 and proved by figures. 
 
 Figr. 14 
 
 The Radius Vector is the three lines in the cut rep- 
 resented by S A and S C and S E. When the earth 
 has passed from A to B, the Radius Vector has passed 
 over the dark space S A B in exactly the same time that 
 it passes over the dark spaces S C D and S E F. The 
 area covered by the three dark spaces is exactly the same ; 
 and the time in passing from A to B, C to D and E to F 
 are exactly the same times. These facts and figures are 
 absolute proofs that out or away from the sun is up to 
 any part of the solar system and towards the sun is 
 down from any part of the solar system. 
 
 As to the inequalities as represented by the height of 
 mountains and depth of valleys, they are in about the 
 same proportion to the earth's size as the inequalities in 
 
THE PBOCESSION OF PLANETS 87 
 
 the skin of an orange are to the orange. On a globe 
 sixteen inches in diameter the earth's crust could be rep- 
 resented by ordinary wrapping paper. 
 
 That the earth is a sphere is proven in a number of 
 ways: (1). All the celestial bodies that we can see are 
 spheres and it is improbable that the earth is an excep- 
 tion; (2) when the shadow of the earth falls upon the 
 moon during an eclipse, it is round; (3) vessels have sail- 
 ed around the earth; (4) when a ship is sailing into port, 
 the masts come in sight first; (5) the horizon expands as 
 we climb a mountain or ascend in an airship; (6) the 
 polar star is higher as we travel north, and, (7) if we 
 climb a very high mountain that is in sight of the sea, 
 we can see the curvature of the surface of the sea. Some 
 theorists and speculators still suppose the earth is flat, 
 some suppose it to be hollow and that we reside on the 
 concave surface of the inside. The main argument of 
 the latter is, that when a ship goes out of sight on the 
 water, it may be brought back to the sight by using the 
 telescope. This, if true, is caused by refraction of the 
 rays of light by the atmosphere and is easily demon- 
 strated. 
 
IX. 
 VENUS. 
 
 The next planet toward the sun, in the same ratio and 
 about half way from Sun to Earth is our very nearest 
 neighbor, Venus. In size it is about the same as Earth 
 and no doubt during the past 400,000,000 years, or a part 
 of that time, has sustained life; more than likely human 
 life. We can produce no reason to believe the material 
 of which Venus was made was different from the ma- 
 terial from which the earth and all other planets are 
 made. This being the case, the conditions would be the 
 same, and so, at the same distance from the sun, nature 
 using the same material, under the same conditions, would 
 probably evolve the same kind of life, both in plants 
 and animals. If, then, in our solar system there is an- 
 other planet supporting life, it must be Venus; but the 
 probabilities are that the time has long since passed, 
 when conditions were favorable to any kind of organic 
 life. 
 
 There is now some well established doubt about Venus 
 rotating upon her axis in the same time as the earth; 
 and it is claimed by many astronomers that she rotates 
 but once on her axis during her entire orbit around the 
 sun; i. e., that she is held with one face to the sun con- 
 tinually. If this is proven to be true, then she is already 
 a dead world; and we could not hope to find life, either 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 89 
 
 upon the side under the eternal blaze of the sun, or upon 
 the side in everlasting cold and darkness. Venus is but 
 a few hundred miles less in diameter than the earth ; and 
 when the two planets are on the same side of the sun, 
 they are only 27,000,000 miles apart; so, by means of 
 better telescopes, other instruments, and photography, 
 we may yet be able to become better acquainted with our 
 nearest neighbor, even during the present century. Some 
 time, so far in the future that it is of little concern to us 
 now, except to help us to understand our present sur- 
 roundings, the earth will have reached the position of 
 Venus; at that time, if there is a living creature upon 
 our planet, we may confidently trust it will be the animal 
 man whose brain power will enable him to conform to 
 and provide against the changing conditions. Accord- 
 ing to the same reasoning it is possible that human life 
 still remains on Venus; but it is not possible that it has 
 yet commenced on Mars. 
 
 Venus receives five times as much light from the sun as 
 the earth does; and if the atmosphere of Venus is very 
 dense, the friction caused by the passage of light thru 
 it, would greatly increase the heat. Some astronomers 
 consider the brightness of Venus due to a metallic luster 
 received from the heat of the sun. If the planet keeps 
 but one face to the sun, it would certainly become greatly 
 heated. This is made manifest on our own great deserts. 
 In Death Valley, during fourteen hours of sunshine, the 
 sand becomes so hot that it will cook eggs. 
 
 The orbital time of Venus around the sun is two hun- 
 dred and twenty-five days or one hundred and forty days 
 less than that of our own planet. The diameter of Venus 
 
90 THE PKOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 is 7700 miles. Its inner heat being gone, the crust has 
 very likely taken all the water; as the crust of our own 
 planet is doing so rapidly as it cools and condenses. The 
 dense atmosphere of Venus that may be made up of the 
 poisonous gases left by the inhabitants after their busy 
 life (speaking collectively) of 400,000,000 years, is like a 
 pall to hide her dead past from us; therefore little is 
 known of her surface. One of her mysteries would be 
 solved and the solution of the working of the solar sys- 
 tem be made easier, if we could find, upon the surface of 
 Venus evidence of her last moon. According to the 
 proper procession herein demonstrated, her last moon 
 should have fallen when she was near her present posi- 
 tion; very likely since she was devoid of animal and 
 plant life, when of course, the cooling and condensing 
 had made the crust hundreds of miles in thickness. In 
 case it fell when the crust was in this condition we should 
 be able to find some signs of it, especially if it was any 
 thing like our own moon in size, which is 2163 miles in 
 diameter. No doubt so large a solid body would break up 
 entirely, but in the absence of water, so large a mass 
 should be visible in some direction. If the orbit of the 
 last moon of Venus was about the same when Venus was 
 at our orbit, it would perhaps take three-fourths of the 
 time to her present orbit, for it to reach the planet and 
 it would be gaining speed all that time. 
 
 Our own moon is but 239,000 miles from the earth and 
 has gained four times its diameter in speed since the 
 first recorded eclipses. When the last moon of Venus 
 finally reached the planet, we can imagine the commo- 
 tion it would make in passing around; and there can be 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 91 
 
 no doubt that it would break up into fragments after, 
 perhaps, rolling around the planet a few times. If all 
 this happened as it must have done, let us imagine the 
 final condition of the moon and planet. Both would 
 probably be cooled to the center. Certainly the moon 
 would be entirely cooled and Venus would have a crust 
 so thick that it could not be broken thru. The only nat- 
 
 Fig 15. The moon as seen from the earth with the naked eye. 
 
 ural conclusion is then, that the moon would be broken 
 into fragments. If so, there would be evidence of these 
 fragments and also gorges and disfigurements of suffi- 
 cient size to be revealed by the telescope. First it might 
 naturally be supposed, that it would roll around the 
 planet at or near the equator, perhaps many times. There 
 is, however, no evidence of any such disaster and the 
 mountains of Venus are about the height they should be 
 
92 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 and should be on the earth 400,000,000 years hence after 
 it becomes cool, almost or quite to the center. The moun- 
 tains of Venus are estimated by some astronomers to 
 reach the height of 160,000 feet. Lockyer's "Elements of 
 Astronomy," note 265, says: 
 
 Spots have been observed on its surface; and in irregularities in 
 the terminator (shadow line) which are supposed to indicate lofty 
 mountains, in some cases exceeding twenty miles in height. 
 
 Other astronomers estimate them to be as high as 
 twenty seven miles or 142,500 feet. The evidence, there- 
 fore, points to the fact of its last moon having fallen as 
 rings, in the same way as we believe a moon is now fall- 
 ing upon Saturn as shown in a preceding chapter. Such 
 falling might in part account for the dense atmosphere. 
 
 One of the popular fallacies for sensational publication 
 is that the celestial bodies contain great stores of won- 
 derful unknown substances or are composed of diamonds, 
 other valuable stones and precious metals. The fact is, 
 however, that they are undoubtedly composed of the 
 same material as the earth, having had the same origin, 
 but, that at different stages of their existence, these 
 metals and substances are in different forms or elements. 
 Sometimes they are solid, sometimes they are liquids, 
 sometimes gases and sometimes separated elements; but 
 as they pass any given point on their way to the sun, 
 their conditions are, perhaps, almost identical. Such 
 facts as are well known, considered with good judgment, 
 will not permit us to think otherwise. 
 
X. 
 
 MERCURY. 
 
 Next, and still in the same decreasing ratio, from the 
 sun half way to Venus, comes Mercury, still smaller and 
 more dense; a world worn out and almost ready for the 
 funeral fire which will finally add it to our monster par- 
 ent. A dead world, like our dead moon keeping but one 
 face to the sun, while it is being gradually dragged in, 
 within reach of those great tongues of fire, reaching out 
 hundreds of thousands of miles for material to keep them 
 forever burning. Mercury has neither air nor water; and 
 can be of no further use to nature, except to become fire- 
 wood; donate its remains to the great central engine of 
 our solar system, to be rejuvenated by the purifying dis- 
 solution and expansion by heat, again sent out as gas to 
 the remote regions of space and again converted into 
 material to form or help form a new world. 
 
 Mercury is 36,000,000 miles from the sun at aphelion; 
 at perihelion, its nearest approach is 28,000,000 miles; 
 and at such times the sun's heat upon it is twelve times 
 as great as upon our earth. On the average it is seven 
 times as great. All this blazing sunlight comes to but 
 one side of the planet and must convert that side into a 
 bake oven, while the opposite side is in continual dark- 
 ness. A dead moon has a change of day and night, be- 
 cause its magnetic pole is turned toward its planet; a 
 
 93 
 
94 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 dead planet turns its magnetic pole to the sun itself, and 
 therefore can have no change of day or night, or change 
 of seasons. 
 
 Every planet, satellite or particle of matter in the uni- 
 verse, be that particle a planet like Jupiter, or a micro- 
 scoipc atom of dust, seems to have its north and south 
 magnetic pole. This motion or guiding force, may be 
 and probably is a part of the force of gravity. There are 
 attracting and repelling motions in nature which we par- 
 tially recognize, fail to explain, even deny in many cases, 
 but which science must now recognize and set about to 
 explain. These motions are most manifest in the mag- 
 netic needle and the common magnet. They are consid- 
 ered very mysterious; but there is no force in nature that 
 cannot be found out and understood when we drop the 
 idea of mystery, because force in nature is a part of 
 nature; and all force in nature (as I have already shown) 
 is made either by expanding by heat or contracting by 
 cold ; and no motion can be made any other way. These 
 forces are directly related to the forces in the magnet and 
 may therefore be easily explained when we find what 
 causes the forces in the magnet. 
 
 Let us examine the magnet. First we subject it to 
 great heat and find it has then lost all its so-called magic 
 power. For the time being it has lost its mystery; and if 
 we will follow this clew, it will lose its mystery for all 
 time. If heat destroys magnetism, that fact alone proves 
 that it is not a force of heat (expansion) ; and, as there 
 is but one other cause of motion (contraction by cooling) 
 it must be a motion of contraction or cooling. Even our 
 own great sun has its north and south pole pointing in 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 95 
 
 the same direction and seems to be attracted by, or paral- 
 lel to some great center of gravity, or community of in- 
 terests entirely outside of the solar system toward 
 which its magnetic pole points or parallels, until it 
 reaches a point near enough its present center of conver- 
 gence to be attracted thereto. 
 
 When a planet nears the sun, or a moon nears its planet, 
 the smaller body turns one of its poles to the larger, 
 just as a needle points to a near-by compass. Altho the 
 magnetic pole of the earth is millions of times greater 
 than the compass, yet the compass is millions of times 
 nearer to the needle. This explains what has happened 
 to Mercury; Mercury and the sun are one magnetically. 
 
 If the time ever comes when we can examine the solar 
 systems of other suns, by means of larger telescopes or 
 new methods, they will be found to be operating on the 
 same principles and under the same laws governing our 
 own solar system; and that the dead planets and moons 
 are guided by the same kind of magnetic force that gov- 
 erns our own. 
 
 Like our Earth and Moon, Mercury travels around 
 the sun in an ellipse; increasing its speed when near ing 
 the sun and decreasing again when receding on the op- 
 posite curve. This proves that a planet increases its 
 speed when it falls toward the sun; and that there is no 
 other force in nature that can give a celestial body a 
 speed, that not only lasts, but that continually increases 
 as it falls toward its center. There is no mystery about 
 it; from every planet, toward the sun is down; and from 
 the sun is up; so, as Mercury is falling toward the sun, 
 by nearing it in its orbit, we see it also increase its speed. 
 
96 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 By examining Mercury with a telescope, we find it to 
 be so near the sun that the sunlight interferes; so there 
 is little hope of ever making any discoveries on its sur- 
 face until new methods and better instruments are in- 
 vented. 
 
XI. 
 THE INNER ASTEROIDS. 
 
 According to the ratio governing the distance of plan- 
 ets from the sun there is room for, and should be at least 
 one more small planet between Mercury and the sun. 
 According to the self-evident facts developed in the Pro- 
 cessional Theory, it is undoubtedly true that this missing 
 planet is another case of Asteroids; a planet which for 
 some cause has been disentegrated and formed a stream 
 of fragments in the planet's orbit. There are many 
 reasons for believing this to be the case. One is, there 
 is no planet where there should be one and a still better 
 one is that vast bodies of material (as already shown) 
 are continually falling into the sun, exploding into gas, 
 showing great black holes, sometimes thousands of miles 
 in diameter and splashing firey fluids tens of thousands 
 of miles in height. 
 
 An observation taken March 26, 1859, by L. Leverrier, 
 is said to have revealed a small planet crossing the sun's 
 disk about 13,000,000 miles from the sun. It was named 
 Vulcan ; and, for many years was supposed to exist. The 
 greatest modern telescopes of today, however, even with 
 the aid of spectroscopic photographs, fail to disclose any 
 such planet. In case there was such a planet there at 
 that time, it must since have disintegrated into small 
 
 97 
 
98 THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 particles that can be seen only as a part of the Zodiacal 
 Light. 
 
 As a planet nears the sun and increases its speed, cen- 
 trifugal force must greatly increase also; and there must 
 come a point at which its centrifugal force outward from 
 the sun and its gravity for the sun, would be so nearly 
 balanced that any expansion by air or water, would 
 overcome what little center of gravity it might have left ; 
 then it would be left without a center of gravity and be- 
 come disintegrated. When once it went to pieces it 
 would immediately become distributed into a belt around 
 the sun; because the nearest pieces would have shorter 
 orbits and gain on the others farther away, in every trip 
 around the sun. That the space from the sun to Mercury 
 is filled with innumerable small pieces of matter, is 
 evident for several reasons ; one of which is the existence 
 of the Zodiacal Light. This is the name given to a faint, 
 ill defined light extending along the zodiac, either in the 
 east before dawn, or in the west after twilight. It so 
 much resembles the dawn of twilight, that it is not or- 
 dinarily noticed; appearing to be a mere upward ex- 
 tension of it. Projected on the sky in the shape of a 
 triangle, it inclines toward the horizon, the same as the 
 ecliptic. During February, March and April you will find 
 it in the west, after the sunlight has disappeared, reach- 
 ing form the horizon in a pyramid, the apex almost to 
 the zenith, where the constellation of the Pleades is 
 located during Febuary and March each year. By notic- 
 ing this light carefully, you will be able to locate the 
 plane of the sun's equator thru space, upon which every 
 planet, astroid, etc., revolve, and which you will notice 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 99 
 
 is at right angles to the Milky Way or Galaxy, surround 
 ed by the nebulae or clouds of crystals beyond Neptune 
 which are the material from which the big new planets 
 are made. This light has been the source of much spec- 
 ulation and mystery. It was originally supposed to be 
 the atmosphere of the sun; but if the Processional Theory 
 is true, it must now be admitted that the sun can have 
 no atmosphere, unless we call the colorless gas of ex- 
 panded matter, atmosphere. This, however is entirely 
 invisible and reaches upward from the sun, becoming loss 
 
 Fig. 16. Corona surrounding the sun during a total eclipse 
 
100 THE PKOCE8SION OF PLANETS 
 
 dense and more sensitive no doubt, until it unites with 
 the same kind of gas from the nearest suns in space. 
 The only rational explanation of this light is that it is re- 
 flected light from the smaller solid matter of decomposed 
 planets and comets, which by reason of their great speed 
 and centrifugal force, have lost their centers of gravity, 
 gone to pieces and are hurrying to the sun, each in its 
 separate orbit. Solid matter must fall towards the sun, 
 which is down from every part of space in our solar sys- 
 tem, according to the law of falling bodies, minus the 
 check it receives from centrifugal force. If it were not 
 falling in an orbit, there would be no centrifugal force 
 and it would follow the exact law of falling bodies with- 
 out any deduction; but even a comet has some motion 
 of an orbit and therefore cannot fall directly into the 
 sun. These facts, then, taken into consideration with 
 the facts shown by the Processional Theory, explain 
 simply and fully the cause of the Zodiacal Light and why 
 it is more dense nearest the sun. Comets are known to 
 be continually nearing the sun and they undoubtedly 
 finally join this revolving mass of zodiacal matter, obey- 
 ing the law of gravity and centrifugal force, (see Cham- 
 ber's Astronomy, Vol. L, page 329,) finally adding their 
 matter to help maintain the ever outward radiation of 
 heat expanded gas from the sun. 
 
 By keeping a record of the sun-spots for a number of 
 years, it has been asserted that the spots are periodical; 
 much more numerous at some times than others. If they 
 are made by the falling of asteroids into the sun, this 
 would be most likely; because the orbits of some worn 
 out comets, the pieces of which can no longer be seen, 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 101 
 
 would add to this mass, periodically, and thus contribute 
 more falling matter at such times than at other times. 
 These little bodies probably travel faster than any other 
 members of the solar system. Giving them the same ratio 
 of increase of speed which the other planets obey, they 
 should be traveling on an average of 5,500,000 miles per 
 day; but any matter that has come near enough to plunge 
 into the sun, must be moving at the lightning speed of 
 nearly 10,000,000 miles per day. 
 
 " Roots and Powers" by C. S. Gould of Manchester, 
 N. H., says: 
 
 It has been shown that the square roots of the distances of the 
 planets are inversely proportional to their velocity of revolution. Hence, 
 the nearer a planet approaches the sun, its velocity is more and more 
 increased. At the distance of one mile, therefore, from the sun, the 
 velocity of the earth's 1 revolution around it would be 19 miles per 
 second, and this multiplied by the square root of 93,890,000 miles (19 x 
 8638) would be 183,122 miles per second, and which is very nearly up to 
 the estimated velocity of light. 
 
 No wonder then, that when one of them falls into the 
 sun there are great magnetic disturbances thruout the 
 solar system; at least as far as the earth, where records 
 have been kept since it became safe to believe the earth 
 is round, or to own a telescope. 
 
 Magnetic observatories are now located in all parts 
 of the world. At these observatories magnets and needles 
 are suspended so they will be agitated by any mag- 
 netic influence. In watching sun-spots, in connection 
 with these delicate needles and magnets, it has been 
 found that sun-spots cause them to vibrate. 
 
 At such times comes the splendors of the auroras in the 
 north; but when sun-spots are few, the auroras and mag- 
 
102 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 netic needles are at rest. There are many notable rec- 
 ords in recent years of the influence of sun-spots upon 
 these instruments, as well as upon the atmosphere and 
 electrical conditions of the weather. This shows that 
 the electrical or heat-force reaches out to every part of 
 the solar system in its control of the motions of matter. 
 Sept. 1, 1859, was a day notable for electric storms and 
 magnetic disturbances on all parts of the earth. In Eu- 
 rope and America telegraphic apparatus were demolish- 
 ed by over charging from nature. Flame followed re- 
 cording pens and auroras of the polar zones reached al- 
 most to the tropics. Late in the afternoon, an English 
 astronomer who was making observations of a group 
 of sun-spots, saw two brilliant splashes of fire which 
 traveled thirty-five thousand miles along the sun's disk 
 in thirty-five minutes. On August 3, 1882, an observation 
 was made at the Rocky Mountain observatory by Prof. 
 Young who observed great splashes of fire on the sun, 
 which he supposed to be eruptions; and at the same in- 
 stant, when light had reached the earth from this fire, 
 the magnetic needles in England and other observatories 
 gave notice of the disturbance. Professor Young's 
 needle was at the same time swung entirely clear of the 
 scale. What excuse can astronomers offer for such great 
 energy on the earth, other than is disclosed by this simple 
 theory, the return of solid matter to the sun, its sudden 
 disintegration and chemical reunion with the sun; so 
 sudden as to cause the mighty explosions inevitable when 
 heat should change solid matter into gas, tens of thou- 
 sands of times larger in bulk, thus giving that great body 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 103 
 
 such an overplus of heat, that its equal in energy was 
 instantly forwarded thru space with the velocity of light? 
 It is a simple, common sense explanation, which alone 
 should give it the brand of truth. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE SUN. 
 
 The sun is the great central engine of the solar system 
 the center of the two great forces of the solar system, 
 which are, heat and gravity. It is of comparatively 
 small density, being so much expanded by heat; but it is 
 886,500 miles in diameter and therefore, 1,300,000 times 
 as large as the earth in bulk. Its surface rotates at the 
 equator at the rate of 4,400 miles per hour and much 
 slower at higher latitudes as it is known to be covered 
 by a loose envelope. On the plane of its equator and in 
 the same direction, are traveling all the celestial bodies 
 of the solar system, except the comets. This great body 
 
 Fig. 17. Sun during total eclipse, showing flames and explosions tens of 
 thousands of miles in height. 
 
 104 
 
THE PBOCESSION OF PLANETS 105 
 
 is supposed by physicists, philosophers and astronomers 
 (who endorse the nebular theory) to be hopelessly loos- 
 ing the energy and matter it radiates away. One of the 
 late astronomers in speaking of the sun's energy, says: 
 
 The supply cannot be infinite; how, then, can the radiation be 
 maintained. 
 
 He does not attempt to explain, but merely asserts that 
 the sun can last only five million years longer, when it 
 will either disappear or become a dark, cold body; leav- 
 ing the earth without heat or light, other than starlight 
 from other suns. It does not seem to occur to him to 
 inquire what becomes of all this matter. We know that 
 matter cannot be destroyed and can only change its form 
 temporarily, therefore there must be a place where all 
 this radiated matter will change back to solid matter. 
 This has already been answered and explained in preced- 
 ing chapters, but it may be objected that there would not 
 be enough returning matter by such a slow process as the 
 returning of a planet once in 400,000,000 years. The an- 
 swer of the Processional Theory is a double answer. 
 First there is no doubt thousands of times more mate- 
 rial going back to the sun in the shape of nebulous 
 matter, sand, meteors and cosmic dust, that we do not 
 see, than is brot, by the returning planets; and sec- 
 ond, the wasting energy of the sun is not nearly as 
 great as measured in our atmosphere by physicists 
 (see Graduated Atmospheres) where the motion of light 
 is passing thru it at the rate of 12,000,000 miles per 
 minute must create great additional friction caused by 
 the resistance of the atmosphere, and consequently add 
 to the real heat of the sun. Going to the top of a 
 
106 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 high mountain where the air is very much more rare 
 than at sea level, we find it much cooler altho nearer 
 the sun. There are even snow capped mountains under 
 the very equator; and if we could measure the heat out- 
 side of the atmosphere, where the motion of light travels 
 with less resistance, we might find the heat very much 
 over estimated. Of one thing we may be quite sure that 
 
 Fig. 18. Nebulae which a large telescope dissolves into suns. 
 
THE PEOOESSION OF PLANETS 107 
 
 what goes up from the sun, must come down again. In 
 any event we can safely trust the force of gravity to 
 carefully guard, collect and safely return, every particle 
 of matter, to the smallest fraction of an ounce, that the 
 force of heat disintegrates and sends out as expanded 
 gas. 
 
 We can begin to realize the vast amount of unseen mat- 
 ter being recieved by the sun when we consider the me- 
 teors that fall upon our own little planet. It is estimated 
 that one million meteors of various sizes fall into the 
 earth's atmosphere every hour. The sun being 1,300,000 
 times larger, would recieve that many times as much 
 more, multiplied by its additional force of gravity. 
 
 From Neptune the sun appears 900 times smaller than 
 from the earth; how much smaller must it appear then, 
 from the nearest fixed star, Alpha Centuri, which is 
 25,000,000,000,000 miles away? From there it would ap- 
 pear 2,699,700 times smaller. Indeed it is quite doubtful 
 if it could be seen at all by human eyes at so great a dis- 
 tance. The pole star is twelve and one-half times as far 
 away as Alpha Centuri and it requires 50 years for light 
 to reach the earth from it a distance of 312,366,700,000,- 
 000,000 miles. Astronomers estimate that Arctaurus is 
 one million times more distant than our sun and that its 
 size would more than fill the orbit of Neptune around the 
 sun. These figures, altho incomprehensible, give us a hint 
 of our comparative unimportance when considered as a 
 part of the universe and nature, when compared with our 
 own near surroundings. These suns are our nearest neigh- 
 bors in a sea of untold trillions, appearing smaller and 
 smaller as they are farther away, until their apparent 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY) 
 
108 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 small size and great numbers, finally melt them into mists 
 of white fleecy clouds. Our own sun, great as it seems 
 to us, would possibly never be missed by our nearest 
 little neighboring sun, if wiped entirely out of existence. 
 What monstrous planets some of these big suns must 
 have in attendance, upon which we would appear as mi- 
 crobes, to any life that they would evolve! Compara- 
 
 Fig. 19. Showing that the sun is constant explosions which throw 
 flames and masses of fire tens of thousands of miles in height. 
 
 lively our earth would not be larger than an ordinary 
 adobe marble ; that is to say, it would take as many earths 
 to make one of them as it would take adobe marbles to 
 make an earth. 
 
 We are in ignorance of the sun's orbit, because we do 
 not know where it is going or what is the center of its 
 orbit ; but we may be quite sure that it travels on an orbit 
 
THE PEOOESSION OF PLANETS 109 
 
 from west to east. Following the law of gravity, there 
 can be no doubt but that it is gradually falling in an orbit 
 towards the nearest sun, Alpha Centuri, and that Alpha 
 Centuri is also falling towards our sun in an orbit, thus 
 forming a binary system of suns. If there are any other 
 suns in this binary system, we cannot at present tell. 
 Modern astronomy shows conclusively that there are 
 many double stars or suns, which make orbits around 
 each other. Sometimes there are more than two, con- 
 sisting of triple and multiple stars. Castor is a double 
 star, in a telescope of modern power, one of them being 
 of the second, and the other of the third magnitude, with- 
 in five seconds of each other. In some cases the distance 
 between these stars is less than one second and they are 
 traveling around each other with a speed so appalling 
 that it is beyond the power of the human brain to 
 comprehend it. Indeed the nearest of these binary sys- 
 tems is so far removed from the earth, that it is scarcely 
 possible to more than estimate their distance. The var- 
 iable star Argol has an orbital period of sixty-nine hours. 
 It is a star of the second magnitude, but for seven hours 
 is partially eclipsed by a monster dark body or a number 
 of them, and its minimum, is reduced to a star of the 
 fourth magnitude for twenty minutes, when its luster is 
 gradually restored. These great bodies, must then be 
 flying around each other separated by a distance of only 
 about 3,000,000 miles. We can form some idea of their 
 great distance from the earth, by comparing their orbits 
 to the rim of a one cent piece, removed to a distance of 
 ten miles from the observer. By the perfect methods of 
 mathematicians, the astonishing fact has been shown, 
 
110 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 that where a binary system is formed of two suns, the 
 motion of each is performed in an ellipse, which contains 
 
 Fig. 20. Showing that the sun is a glowing, burning mass of flame. 
 
 the center of gravity of the two suns in its focus. One 
 of the finest binary stars is Castor which is divided into 
 a star of the second magnitude and one of the third. The 
 polar, or north star, is also a binary; its companion being 
 much smaller, of the ninth magnitude only. Mizar, in 
 the constellation of Ursa Major, the middle star in the 
 part called the tail, is also a beautiful double star. 
 Lyrae is a most interesting double star, each part of which 
 again a double, making a double double star. The entire 
 star consists of four stars in two pairs; the pairs revolv- 
 ing around each other, and the two pairs also revolving 
 each other. This we see makes a very complicated set 
 of motions to be dealt with by mathematicians. 
 
 Prof. Burnam of the Lick observatory had discovered 
 one thousand new double stars, as early as 1897. Some 
 of these stars are thousands of times farther away than 
 others and their distance can only be estimated by cal- 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 111 
 
 culating the diameter of the telescope required to bring 
 them into view. Some of our comparatively near neigh- 
 bor suns are so immense that they would fill our earth's 
 orbit around the sun; yet they obey the same laws that 
 govern the procession of planets in our own solar system, 
 are gradually approaching each other and when they 
 finally come together, will present the phenomena of a 
 burning Star as did the "New Star in Perseus" that ap- 
 peared so suddenly in that constellation on the 21st day 
 of Feb., 1901, and in two days reached the brilliancy of a 
 star of the first magnitude. The great speed shown 
 later in the revolving mass composing this new star, con- 
 sidered together with its great distance from the earth, 
 makes conclusive evidence that it is not a melting planet, 
 occupying a position in another system corresponding to 
 the position of Jupiter in ours, but that it was a binary 
 system of suns that fell together. Soon after its first 
 great light had subsided, it was seen to be spreading and 
 occupying a larger space. Later, about November, it 
 was found that portions of the mass had moved thou- 
 sands of millions of miles apart in orbits, with almost 
 the velocity of light. The distance from the earth is so 
 vast, that the speed cannot be accurately determined; but 
 it is appalling to astronomers, and all this goes to prove 
 that the new star in Perseus was not the result of the melt- 
 ing of a first class planet in a solar system, but on the 
 much larger scale of a binary system of suns, explainable 
 only by the Processional Theory. 
 
 Now according to the Processional Theory of the 
 Motions of Matter, a sun must gradually shorten its orbit 
 and increase its speed, by exactly the same law that 
 
112 THE PKOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 planets and other bodies follow. They with their whole 
 system of satellites, must be continually nearing some 
 center and gaining speed upon their mighty orbits. In 
 the case of our own sun, its orbit is so great that we can 
 have no conception of its size, or of which, or how many 
 of the burning stars in sight are its binary companions. 
 One thing seems reasonable; our sun must be in the hey- 
 day of its youth, as it appears to travel but 45,000 miles 
 per hour thru space ; and when we remember that a planet 
 gains a speed of 2,500,000 miles per day, by the time it 
 reaches the orbit of Mercury in our own little system, we 
 can begin to have some vague idea of the speed a sun 
 would gain in reaching the center of its convergency in 
 an orbit so immense that it must take millions of times 
 longer to reach its center, than it does a planet. Does 
 this, then, not explain the phenomena of the "burning 
 star in Perseus ' ' ? When two great suns and their solar 
 systems, finally come in contact after revolving around 
 each other with speed of light, would, or could any thing 
 happens, except just what the spectroscopic photographs 
 show has and is happening to this new and astonishing 
 star? It is almost marvelous that two suns when travel- 
 ing at such a rate of speed, could hold themselves together 
 until they could touch each other; but, the moment they 
 did touch, there could be no other result but the great 
 heating and lighting which did take place in this ex- 
 ample; and when their masses were torn to pieces, in this 
 condition of heat and gas, revolving with the speed of 
 light, their centrifugal force and the expanding force of 
 heat, would destroy their centers of gravity for each 
 other and they would at once distribute the larger part 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 113 
 
 of their matter over a circular space, billions of miles in 
 diameter, the ellipses of which would correspond with the 
 ellipses of the former suns which made the vast seas of 
 matter with its burning central suns. Then must com- 
 mence again the process of a new solar system for each; 
 with new planets forming on their uppermost edges, 
 gradually falling back to the center force or suns, which 
 are always expanding matter into gas and thus as we see 
 
 Fig. 21. Photograph of Milky Way, taken at Sidney, Australia- 
 
114 THE PKOCE8SION OF PLANETS 
 
 forcing it up again by a comparatively never-ending pro- 
 cession of expanded colorless gas from the centers and 
 ponderable matter falling back as planets, satellites, 
 asteroids and comets to the centers. 
 
 The outside of the sun, at least, is a great burning mass 
 of fire containing all the elements found in the earth. Its 
 heat is many times greater than the most intense electric 
 heat that can be generated at the earth. Argo determin- 
 ed that the light of the sun is of the nature of burning gas 
 or flame; and analyses show that the atmosphere is com- 
 posed of gaseous matter in intense combustion or chem- 
 ical friction. 
 
 In our study of the Inner Asteroids, we have seen that 
 by a carefully arranged and complete system of magnets 
 and needles at the earth, it is found that sun-spots and 
 explosions on the surface of the sun are followed by the 
 vibration of these suspended magnets and needles, thus 
 plainly showing that something has happened at the sun 
 to cause it to send out such additional energy from itself 
 with the speed of light, as to cause these vibrations. The 
 cause of the heat and light from the sun and the cause of 
 the periodical energy that vibrates needles and magnets 
 at the time of sun-spots, has been to science the unknow- 
 able mystery of the sun. The only theory that can or 
 does explain the apparent mystery, is the Processional 
 Theory. The explosion and the great whirling black hole 
 which gave due notice eight minutes later at the earth 
 (not only by vibrations on the human eye but also by 
 vibrations on and oscillations of suspended magnets and 
 needles) can be none other than effects produced by the 
 collision and chemical friction of disintegrating matter 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 115 
 
 which, reuniting or fluxing with the burning matter of 
 the sun, almost instantly expanded into bulk, tens of 
 thousands of times greater than when it enters; thus 
 causing the jarring of the whole sea of expanded matter 
 between the sun and the earth where the needles and 
 magnets wait to receive it. 
 
 Pit;. 22. Japssn's photograph of Solar Disc, showing granulations 
 or tops of prominences and one spot. 
 
 For the sake of illustration, let us suppose an asteroid, 
 ten miles in diameter should fall into the sun. If this Pro- 
 cessional Theory be correct, its speed would be about ten 
 millions miles per day ; or, 68,000 miles per minute. This 
 must send it thousands of miles into the sun before it 
 can possibly be expanded into gas. No hole would be 
 seen at first, but it would not be a minute perhaps, until, 
 instead of occupying 1000 cubic miles as solid matter (if 
 it were ordinary rock) it would occupy a space of 11,000,- 
 
116 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 000 cubic miles as expanded gas. Now, what could hap- 
 pen but a great explosion, leaving a hole exposing the 
 deeper parts of the sun, and shooting fiery flames and 
 gases, tens of thousands of miles in height? Altho the 
 solid matter fell into the sun, the explosion would come 
 outward ; and as it went in, it would have its axial motion 
 (as returning and outgoing matter has) so that the hole 
 made by the exploding gas would have the motion often 
 noticable in the spots and firey explosions spoken of as 
 * i cyclones. ' ' 
 
 The enormous collision that must be the result of stop- 
 ping a speed of 68,000 miles per minute, and the chemical 
 friction generated by its fluxing, would cause an immense 
 additional heat in the sun. This might be illustrated by 
 adding a gallon of gasoline to the fire in an already hot 
 stove. The jarrings or vibrations of this gas from the 
 sun, would send its impulse up from the sun with the 
 speed of light. The more heat, the more rapid the vi- 
 bration and consequently the more friction and also more 
 pressure at the earth. 
 
 What but the explosion of a great lump of matter into 
 gas, could give the whole body of expanded gas between 
 the sun and the earth, such an impulse as to force the 
 suspended magnet to move clear of its scale, as noted by 
 Prof. Young at the Rocky Mountain Observatory? 
 
 If the heat from the sun was regular and constant, we 
 might conclude that its source of supply was only the 
 radiation of its own material as per the nebular hypoth- 
 esis; but when we know and measure its irregularity, 
 must we not look for a reason that will make it consistent 
 with natural causes? Let us return to the gun barrel 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 117 
 
 filled with bullets, to illustrate the effect of the unusual 
 amount of heat following the sun-spots: Suppose we 
 hang a magnet at the muzzle of the gun, where a bullet 
 coming out would move it the distance of the diameter 
 of one bullet. If we could instantly push ten bullets in 
 at the breach, we would instantly move the magnet the 
 distance of the diameter of ten bullets. Rodger's Theory 
 of the Universe says of sun-spots: 
 
 f But what shall we say of the so-called sun spots which 
 appear as if located on the face of the sun? The sun heat, sun light 
 and sun dazzle, the corona and prominences, all appear quite as real as 
 if located at the sun; and shall this spot phenomena prove an exception 
 to this great rule? All these have proved to be mere superficial appear- 
 ances, so far as the sun is concerned; then why should not the sun spot 
 be classed with these as purely an optical illusion? That it is such an 
 illusion is now demonstrable. Thus single spots and groups of spots, 
 which if * located at the sun itself would occupy an area of millions of 
 miles, appear and disappear instantaneously. This implies velocities 
 wholly impossible. This phenomena is therefore an illusion, so far as 
 being located at the sun is concerned. * * * 
 
 That a sun-spot is on the sun is very easily proven by 
 spectroscopic photographs of a spot, taken at regular in- 
 tervals as it travels with the sun's rotation from west to 
 east. When it passes half way across the disk it is near- 
 est to us and shows the full size; then it gradually grows 
 narrower till it presents a dark line paralel with the sun's 
 edge ; and when upon the very edge of the disk, it shows 
 an indenture in the sun's surface which we illustrate in 
 the following cut, representing six photographs of the 
 same spot taken at noon on six successive days. This 
 is conclusive evidence that the spot is on the sun and not 
 in the eyelashes of the observer. Not only this ; it proves 
 
118 
 
 THE PJIOCE8SION OF PLANETS 
 
 that the sun is a sphere and that it revolves on its axis in 
 about four times six days. 
 
 Fig. 23. 
 
 Not realizing that the planets are continually being 
 formed in the region of nebular clouds beyond Neptune, 
 but believing they fall into the sun, Dr. Meyer says in 
 1905, in his book "The End of the World/' page 132, 
 after showing how the moons disintegrate into rings and 
 fall to their planets: 
 
 The same interplay must take place between the planets. 
 One after another the planets will have to reunite with the sun. And 
 whether a planet drops all at once, or whether it is first transformed into 
 a ring and then falls piecemeal very gradually, the result will be 
 essentially the same. In far off future ages' the sun's diminishing supply 
 of life-giving heat will be replenished, in the one case suddenly, there- 
 with causing the sun to flare up brightly as a new star, in the other 
 slowly and in gradual additions. Still, sometime the last planet 
 will have dropped upon the sun and the last -particle of heat generated 
 will have been radiated into space. All the material which upbuilt the 
 splendid sun and its train of planets with their richly varied life, will 
 have become a single mass, cold, dark, inert, rolling thru the empty 
 void of space without end, without aim. This is the last, the very 
 last end of the solar system. Is there anything that could ever again 
 awaken it into new life, after its life giving heat has thus been com- 
 pletely spent? All bodies move restlessly thru space. There is no 
 star in the heavens that stands still. Whatever else may befall it, it 
 moves on and on. Even after it is dead and burnt out it continues 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 119 
 
 on its way. The terriffic force* that impels it survives thru all the 
 catastrophes which it undergoes. But the dead orb cannot transform 
 this energy of motion into vital power for itself, since only a difference 
 of motion can set up a movement to and fro among the rigid particles, 
 of which the cold burnt out sun is composed. But by virtue of inertia, 
 the universal property of matter, every change of motion requires the 
 action of a resisting force. And this force is lacking as long as no 
 body from without acts on that dead mass. 
 
 This is exactly what would and will happen; but not 
 when the present planets have all fallen into the sun, be- 
 cause, as we see, new planets are being continually formed 
 in the zone of nebulae beyond Neptune. The matter of 
 the sun, augmented by the return of the planets may be 
 thrown out and returned thousands of times before the 
 sun reaches its binary companion, just as the water of the 
 sea may be evaporated into clouds and fall as rain and 
 snow upon the earth thousands of times before it has all 
 disappeared into the earth's cooling crust. The inertia, 
 spoken of by the Doctor is in this case, simply falling ; or 
 gravitation towards its binary companion. There is an- 
 other inertia, overlooked by him, which sends them apart. 
 This, as we all must see, is the expansion of heat, which, 
 added to the immense centrifugal force they have gained 
 by their increased speed, sends them as far apart as they 
 ever were. 
 
 The uneasiness of some scientists and astronomers lest 
 some stray planet, sun, comet or other celestial body may 
 sooner or later collide with and destroy the earth, is as 
 needless as are the sleepless nights passed by people who 
 imagine the forests may pass away, or that the supply of 
 coal and oil will be exhausted. It is as impossible for 
 
 *Falling of course. 
 
120 THE rKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 two planets to collide, as for two fans of a windmill to 
 collide. When we consider that expanded matter or gas 
 from the sun condenses into dust and gathers finally into 
 a world which then falls in a spiral orbit to the sun, it is 
 
 Fig. 24. Kale's snapshot of Solar Prominence. March 24, 1892. 
 
 plain that each planet in order to form, gathers by at- 
 traction the material within hundreds of millions of miles 
 from it, including the lesser independent bunches which 
 form its satellites. This expanded matter or gas when 
 leaving the sun has the motion and speed of the sun's 
 equator and must always continue in the same motion 
 from west to east; therefore, the new planet must have 
 the same motion around the sun that the gas had. This 
 leaves no possible chance for a planet to travel from east 
 to west, or to meet another planet, even if two could be 
 formed in the same belt or orbit of crystals. When a 
 planet has been formed from this consolidated gas or dust 
 it has by that time (the first four hundred million years), 
 fallen half way to the sun; leaving the vast field thru 
 which it gathered itself, to the solidifying gas out of 
 which in the next four hundred million years) the next 
 planet will be formed, thus leaving a clear field for each 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 121 
 
 planet as it comes in. It is true that comets, asteroids or 
 meteoroids may cross the earth's orbit, but they are small; 
 and if they should actually come within the earth's at- 
 traction and finally fall upon its surface, the chances are 
 two to one that they would fall into the sea. Then if they 
 were large enough to make a tidal wave, they might per- 
 haps drown a few people. Should they happen to fall 
 upon the land, the catastrophe would probably be less 
 fatal than a cyclone in a city like St. Louis, or an earth- 
 quake in San Francisco. True, the satellites of the plan- 
 ets fall upon them, one at a time, as they reach their 
 planet ; but they undoubtedly go to pieces and fall gradu- 
 ally; most of them burning, or changing? back into gas, in 
 their atmosphere. When the earth was at the present orbit 
 of Jupiter, it no doubt had as many moons ; but they have 
 fallen one at a time, most of them no doubt, before human 
 life had evolved. If the inside moon of Mars should fall 
 bodily upon the planet at this time, it would only injure 
 plants or possibly a few serpentine animals, as the planet 
 must still be too hot to have evolved much higher life 
 than vegetation. Our moon is approaching the earth 
 and gaining speed as it falls; but it will reach the earth 
 no doubt, about the time the earth turns one of its mag- 
 netic poles to the sun and thus destroy all organic life. 
 That which applies to moons and planets must also ap- 
 ply to suns; and these bodies can only meet in binary sys- 
 tems and again be forced into space from which they 
 came. A celestial body cannot travel unless it is falling 
 to some other body or is being thrown up by heat and cen- 
 trifugal force. The other body is also falling and they 
 cannot fall straight together since, as we have seen, the 
 
122 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 motion of both is orbital (or circular) causing them to 
 make vast orbits around each other. Thus we see it is an 
 utter impossibility for any celestial body to meet with 
 or crash into another, except as compelled by the laws 
 governing the procession of celestial bodies, and which 
 is made by the opposing forces, heat and cold. 
 
 As the sun is continually expanding matter into color- 
 less gas at its surface, and pushing the gas above it, fur- 
 ther up as more is expanded from below, we must admit 
 that when it leaves the sun it travels in the same time 
 and direction as the equator of the sun, which being 
 the most active zone, must throw off the most matter; 
 and as the orbital speed of the sun at its equatorial zone 
 is 4,400 miles per hour, the gas thrown off here must 
 take the same direction and rate of speed on the plane 
 of the ecliptic or equatorial zone. As it is pushed far- 
 ther and farther up, by the expansion of the constantly 
 forming gas from below, it would have a continually 
 lengthening orbit; therefore it would continually take it 
 longer to complete its next orbit, even if it kept up the 
 speed of 4,400 miles per hour. For the sake of argu- 
 ment, we will say there is no friction and it never loses 
 this speed until at the end of billions of years it has 
 reached the regions of immeasurable cold, say twice the 
 distance of Neptune from the sun. Of course there may be 
 some friction and therefore a loss of speed on account of 
 the shorter orbits of the atoms of gas towards the sun. 
 As gas is swelled and pushed up from the sun below, its 
 weight is upon the gas below, and therefore is continu- 
 ally becoming lighter as it goes up ; the gas next the sun 
 is condensed, because of the weight of all above it, the 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 123 
 
 same as air is more condensed -at sea level than on a 
 mountain top, or as water is more condensed as we go 
 down in it. The pressure under water increases so fast 
 that an ordinary man, unprotected, will be killed at a 
 depth of 40 feet. Figure 25 will illustrate what I 
 
 mean by the same gas filling the same space (and 
 the more as it gets lighter) in larger orbits. In the 
 space (1) which encircles the sun, the size of the sur- 
 face is the same as (2), (3) or (4). You perceive it 
 leaves the sun less and less rapidly, because it has a larg- 
 er circle to fill; therefore the same body of gas will oc- 
 cupy a narrower belt because it is so much larger in cir- 
 
14 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 cumference. Half the distance to the nearest sun center, 
 is twelve million, million miles; and we can understand 
 that up at that point the gas must be very thin and light. 
 We must not forget that motion (which is light, heat, 
 electricity, sound, etc.,) will certainly travel at greater 
 speed thru gas that is light, than thru gas that is heavy. 
 The reason why we have light in an incandescent bulb, 
 is because the platinum wire makes a resistance to the 
 motion of electricity, which then makes the friction of 
 light and heat. Therefore, as expanded matter is swell- 
 ed up from the sun in greater orbits, more space is filled 
 with the same gas, because it is less dense, having less 
 weight of gas above it. This is the outward pressure 
 that Prof. Lebudue has called "The Outward Pressure 
 of Light." If he has measured it any where near cor- 
 rectly, he should be able to find a measurable difference 
 in its speed at the opposite ends of the earth's orbit, as 
 there is a difference of 3,000,000 miles between its dis- 
 tance from the sun at perihelion and its distance at 
 aphelion. 
 
 We know this gas must finally reach a region so cold 
 that it cannot remain expanded; let us suppose it to be 
 the nebulous region beyond Neptune, 6,000,000,000 miles 
 up from the sun; what must take place then, but a slow 
 and gradual collection of dust into little bunches that at- 
 tract each other until finally the foundation for a new 
 world is laid, with an orbital motion and speed inher- 
 ited from its parent, the sun? Every atom of this newly 
 formed planet must have this "inheritance" or motion 
 of the sun, and every planet is a collection of motion as 
 well as matter. The orbital motion cannot stop or 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 125 
 
 change because it is only the extended motion of the sun, 
 of which all things in the solar system are a part, wheth- 
 er visible or invisible, whether swelling up by expansion 
 
 Fig. 26. The Eyepiece of a Great Telescope 
 
126 THE PKOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 of heat, or falling back to the sun as ponderable matter. 
 So also we can say of the axial motion or any other mo- 
 tion they may have. 
 
 When we understand how and why the solar system 
 keeps itself in motion, how our sun is supplied with heat, 
 light and material with which to make new worlds, 
 there will be time then to hunt up a binary system or 
 larger cycle of revolving matter to which we belong. 
 No doubt the individual members of our binary system 
 are revolving from west to east, and that as a system it 
 is revolving in the galaxy, from west to east; that that 
 galaxy revolves from west to east, and that all the ga- 
 laxies both visible and invisible do likewise. If we once 
 get the idea that a solar system is a self-operating ma- 
 chine, the center and engine of which is a sun, that every 
 direction from one of these suns is up, every direction to 
 it is down and that its fires or force is maintained and 
 fed by the continual return of matter from the regions 
 where the gas is cooled, the continual turning or return- 
 ing, we can understand that matter can never be motion- 
 less or destroyed. ( Universe is from the Latin, "uni", 
 one; "ver", to turn.) 
 
 At first it would seem to us that it would take an atom 
 of gas vastly longer to travel from the sun to its outward 
 limit, than to fall back to the sun as solid matter; but it 
 must take the same time to the fractional part of a sec- 
 ond to make the upward trip, that it takes to make the 
 downward trip. This is because the acceleration of 
 motion is reversed at the upward and downward end of 
 both journeys; that is to say, matter recedes from the 
 sun more and more slowly as it goes farther up and re- 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 127 
 
 Fig. 27. Nebulae which cannot be dissolved into suns, 
 
 turns more and more slowly (that is, approaches the 
 sun) because of the centrifugal force generated. We 
 
128 THE PBOCESSIUN OF PLANETS 
 
 find Neptune approaches the sun 1,570,000,000 miles in 
 the same time that Mercury approaches the sun 15,000- 
 000 miles; for the reason of the centrifugal force gener- 
 ated by the continually increasing speed of falling. One 
 of the atoms of expanded gas on its upward trip is forc- 
 ed to leave the sun by expansion thousands of times 
 faster at Mercury's orbit than when at Neptune's orbit, 
 for the reason of its orbit continually increasing in 
 length and therefore it takes more gas from the sun to 
 fill each succeeding outward orbit. All this may be 
 easily proven by the mathematical calculations of any 
 one competent to do the work. It would include the dif- 
 ference in the weight of the gas, as it became less con- 
 densed up from the sun. To illustrate more plainly, let 
 us take Sir William Thompson's 400,000,000 year period 
 between the age of planets as a standard and say that 
 from the time an expanded atom of gas leaves the sun 
 until it reaches the orbit of Neptune would be 400,000,- 
 000 years or the same time that Neptune will require to 
 reach Uranus. In other words, that the atom of gas 
 must travel as far from the sun during its first 400,000- 
 000 years, as a new planet falls towards the sun dur- 
 ing the first 400,000,000 years of its return. The next 
 400,000,000 years, the atom would only leave the sun 
 about half as far, but the space to be filled with gas 
 would be the same as the space filled during the first 
 400,000,000 years, thus reversing the process of the speed 
 of the returning new planet. 
 
 I do not make these calculations with anv claim to 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 129 
 
 exactness, but with the idea only of illustrating the mo- 
 tions of matter on its upward trip from the sun and its 
 returning or falling back to the sun, as contracted or 
 solid matter. 
 
XIII. 
 
 MOONS. 
 
 
 
 There is an interesting fact in connection with the 
 moons or satellites of planets, that certainly points to the 
 truth that the planets are of different ages. Commenc- 
 ing at Venus and going outward, we find the moons ar- 
 ranged in numbers as follows: 
 
 Number of Moons 
 
 Venus 
 
 Earth 1 
 
 Mars 2 
 
 Asteroids ? (4) 
 
 Jupiter 7 
 
 Saturn 9 (known) 
 
 We will discuss the moons of Uranus and Neptune later 
 inasmuch as they are so far away that only a few of them 
 can be seen and seem to be traveling in contrary orbits 
 and deserve to be considered as comets or satellites not 
 having reached their orbits as regular moons. 
 
 The question now is, why do these planets lose their 
 satellites as they approach the sun? Why has Saturn 
 nine moons and Venus none, with a gradual decrease be- 
 tween! Saturn's moons travel around it in the same di- 
 rection that the planets all travel around the sun, on the 
 plane of the sun's equator. The outside moon of Saturn 
 is farther from the planet than the moon of any other 
 
 130 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 131 
 
 Fig. 28. 
 
132 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 planet whose moons we can see, and the outside moon of 
 each planet as we come in towards the sun is closer to 
 the planet and traveling at greater speed. The moons 
 of Jupiter are near enough to make it possible to meas- 
 ure their distance and speed with considerable exact- 
 ness. Four of the moons of Jupiter may be seen with an 
 ordinary field glass and the largest one can sometimes be 
 seen with the naked eye, from high mountain tops in 
 such a climate as that of Southern California. In the 
 largest telescopes they show in considerable detail; 
 enough so that moon I, is known to be held with one face 
 towards Jupiter, having either turned one of its mag- 
 netic poles to the planet, or elongated, the same as our 
 moon is held by the earth, and the same as the earth 
 will sometime be held by the sun, as Venus and Mercury 
 are now known to be held. These four moons numbered 
 from the planet outwardly I, II, III, and IV were the first 
 objects upon which Gallileo turned the first telescope 
 ever made. In 1892 Prof. Bernard, noticing the perfect 
 ratio in the distance and speed of these four moons, de- 
 cided that at the proper ratio of distance, there should 
 be another moon between Moon I and Jupiter; and sure 
 enough, after considerable pains he found the photo- 
 graph of it on the sensitive plate, and very small; 112,- 
 500 miles distant, or less than half as far from Jupiter as 
 our own moon is from the earth and making its entire 
 orbit around Jupiter in eleven hours and fifty-seven min- 
 utes and twenty-two and six-tenths seconds. 
 
 The following table shows the name, distance, time of 
 orbit and speed of each of Jupiter's satellites. 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 133 
 
 Name 
 
 Bernard's 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 Distance 
 112,500 
 278,500 
 495,000 
 605,000 
 1,160,000 
 
 Time 
 12 hours 
 42 " 
 85 " 
 171 " 
 400 " 
 
 Miles per day. 
 1,350,000 
 960,000 
 754,000 
 580,000 
 415,000 
 
 In examining these moons and their various relations 
 to the planet, the evidence they give of the truth of the 
 " Processional Theory" becomes almost startling to one 
 who has not been a student of it. In the first place, the 
 moons follow the same law of ratio in shortening their 
 orbits and increasing their speed, that the planets do 
 in approaching the sun, that the sun itself must follow, 
 
 1150.000 
 
 Fig. 29. Jupiter's Moons. Since this cut was made two more moons 
 have been discovered farther out at same ratio of distance and speed. 
 
 The outside circle shows the size of original supposed nebula which 
 would turn as the rim of a wheel, as the whole mass turned. 
 
134 THE PKOCEiSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 in approaching the center of its binary system and in 
 fact, that all condensed matter must follow as it falls in 
 an orbit to its center of convergence. 
 
 The little moon discovered by Prof. Bernard, we must 
 notice, is traveling at the rate of 1,350,000 miles per day 
 and must have gained this speed by falling towards Jup- 
 iter. According to the Nebular Theory, it should have 
 been thrown out from Jupiter, in which case it would of 
 course have Jupiter's equatorial speed, which is only 
 about 600,000 miles per day; less than half the speed 
 it does really make. When we get into the belt of Aster- 
 oids, this side of Jupiter, we find, as we know, the re- 
 mains of what we have every reason to believe was once 
 a great burning world in the evolutionary stage from a 
 first to a second class planet, leaving no record of moons, 
 but entitled to no less than four according to the regular 
 ratio of satellites. Within the last few years several 
 large bodies have been discovered in this belt or orbit 
 of the Asteroids, one of which is now believed to be al- 
 most the size of our own moon, and three others larger 
 than the greater moon of Mars. No doubt these four 
 large Asteroids may really be the outer moons of the 
 unfortunate body. The inner one may have been broken 
 up in the explosion, since being such small bodies, they 
 must all have been cooled; but it would hardly be likely 
 to break up the outer ones. The outer one should have 
 been 600,000 miles out from the planet in making its 
 orbit, 1,200,000 miles in diameter. We may be sure there 
 are at least three large bodies in the orbital path of the 
 Asteroids; and it is more than probable they are the 
 moons wanted as witnesses. 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 135 
 
 When we reach the little planet Mars, we find the 
 number of its moons in the right ratio, but their size 
 and their distance from the planet is in proportion to 
 the size of that little world. Both of them have turned 
 their magnetic poles to the planet, and Phobus, the 
 smallest and nearest, has reached such great speed in 
 its fall, that it travels around the planet three times, 
 while the planet itself rotates once; and thus as we have 
 seen, it rises in the west and sets in the east. 
 
 Some moons may be large enough to have created in- 
 ternal heat as planets do, by the friction of their loose, 
 hence grinding matter causing them to melt as planets 
 do and as our moon seems to have been melted. One of 
 the moons in Saturn's retinue, a very bright one, may no 
 doubt now be in a molten condition. 
 
 In one particular, moons are different from planets; 
 they cannot keep up their procession. As each moon is 
 drawn into the planet, the planet has one moon less as 
 we have seen, because all moon material is being used 
 by the new planet till both go into the sun; whereas, 
 when a planet is drawn into the sun, a new planet is 
 forming and collecting its moons. 
 
 When we reach the earth we find our moon, 240,000 
 miles distant, making its orbit in 28 days and with one 
 magnetic pole turned to the earth. It is known to have 
 gained on its orbit four times its own breadth since the 
 first recorded eclipses. Prof. Whe well's Bridgewater 
 Treatise, page 128 says: 
 
 The fact really is that changes are taking place in the motions of the 
 heavenly bodies which have gone on progressively from the first dawn 
 of science. The moon has been moving quicker from the first 
 
 recorded eclipses and is now in advance about four times her own 
 
136 
 
 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 breadth of what her own place would have been if it had not been 
 affected by this acceleration. The obliquity of the eclipse 
 
 also, is in a state of diminution and is now about two-fifths of a degree 
 less than it was in the time of Aristotle. 
 
 Here we have proof that the moon is increasing her 
 speed and shortening her orbit. The same infallible law 
 carries her nearer to the earth, which carries the earth 
 to the sun and the sun to its binary companion. 
 
 The moon seems to have been a molten bodv at some 
 
 Fig. 30. Showing where the moon has been pitted by falling meteors 
 or asteroids. 
 
THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 137 
 
 remote period, but being so much smaller than the earth, 
 it has apparently cooled to the center and absorbed all 
 its atmosphere and water. In contracting it has raised 
 mountains, that, in proportion to the size of the earth, 
 are five times as high, showing that the crust is im- 
 mensely thick, if indeed not cooled to the center. 
 
 One of the most curious and most interesting objects 
 on the moon, are its ring mountains which are supposed 
 to be extinct volcanoes. These happen almost any place 
 on the moon's surface; on the mountains, plains or old 
 sea beds. They are of all imaginable sizes in diameter, 
 from a few hundred feet to more than a hundred miles 
 and have all the appearance of asteroids and meteors 
 having fallen on the surface. One of the most promin- 
 ent objects on the moon, is the so-called crater, Coperni- 
 cus. The details of the crater itself and of the immedi- 
 ate neighborhood, reveal the unmistakable evidence of a 
 meteor having struck there. Lockyer's "Elements of 
 Astronomy, " page 119, says: 
 
 * * * The depth of the crater floor, from the top of the wall, is 
 11,300 feet and the height of the wall above the general surface of the 
 moon is 2,680 feet. 
 
 Here, then, is an enormous hole thirty miles in dia- 
 meter and more than 9,000 feet below the surface of the 
 moon. The entire matter of the wall around it, which 
 is above the surface of the moon, if scraped off level and 
 thrown into the crater, would not fill it more than one- 
 fifth full. If this was the crater of a volcano, where, 
 then is the lava that came out of that part already 
 empty? In the case of a volcano on the earth, we know 
 that the material thrown out is thousands of times more 
 than the hollow of the crater in sight. In fact there is 
 
138 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 Fig. 31. Grand Canyon of the Colorado, from Bright Angel Hotel. 
 A railroad now runs to the Canyon from Williams, on the Santa Fe Rail- 
 way, and improved hotel accommodations are being furnished by the 
 railroad company . 
 
 such a vast difference that we never think of making a 
 comparison. On the contrary, if you are on a train cross- 
 ing the bridge spanning the great Canyon Diablo, in 
 New Mexico, even children will wonder where the dirt is 
 that came out of it. It is in the same direction that the 
 material is, which once occupied the crater of Coper- 
 nicus; driven down and packed underneath the asteroid 
 that fell there. A part of this was pushed up to form 
 the ring wall, and by close observation we can tell at 
 what angle the asteroids struck the moon, by the shape 
 of the ring it pushed up and the direction taken by the 
 ribs or rays called rilles, which run out from it and 
 should convince us of the nature of its origin. These 
 rilles are certainly plain enough evidence, that they were 
 raised from beneath by pressure of the falling asteroids. 
 If any reader doubt this, let him throw a good sized rock 
 into stiff mud and note the result. There will be a ring 
 around the hole the rock makes; the rock will be seen 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 139 
 
 sticking in the center of the hole below the surface ; there 
 will be rilles or rays, radiating from the hole and inclined 
 to be parallel with the direction taken by the rock. Then 
 let him take a good photograph of the crater Copernicus 
 or almost any ring mountain of the moon and note the 
 exact resemblance. Of course there are real craters as 
 there are also real mountains on the moon, caused by con- 
 traction in cooling. Dr. M. Willhelm Meyer in his ' ' End 
 of the World " on page 126 says: 
 
 The force which always draws heavenly bodies closer together will 
 in the end cause the moons to drop upon their planets and these again 
 upon their respective suns. The moons will first unite with the planets 
 because the distance they have to cover is shorter. All the planets with 
 the exception of the earth and Neptune, which is the farthest from the 
 sun, have more than one moon if they have any at all. * Taking 
 
 all things into consideration, one can scarcely doubt that the rings of 
 Saturn represent the product of the disintegrating action of the gravita- 
 tion of a number of the planet's moons. It has been demonstrated that 
 these rings are composed of tiny separate particles, each having an inde- 
 pendent movement of its own. The innermost of the rings is semi-trans- 
 parent. This ' ' gauze ring, " as it is called, is probably made up partially 
 of matter which originally belonged to the luminous outer rings but 
 which lost part of their centrifugal force in collisions and are therefore 
 now dropping in a spiral path upon Saturn as meteors of a special kind, 
 which probably do not injure the planet any, since it is protected by a 
 very dense atmosphere. It is quite possible that in course of time, the 
 material of the entire ring will gradually unite with the planet without 
 producing any kind of catastrophe. 
 
 The above is along the line of a procession of planets 
 and was published in 1905. Dr. Meyer has the same idea 
 of the rings of Saturn as those held by Wm. Plotts and 
 published in Higher Science magazine March 1904. 
 
XIV. 
 COMETS. 
 
 A comet is a small body of material which gathers too 
 far out from the plane of the sun's equator to be attracted 
 as the moon of a planet; so, having very little motion, it 
 falls more nearly in a direct line to the sun. As it nears 
 the sun it gains such an immense speed and approaches 
 so near to the sun that it is thrown up into space again, 
 by centrifugal force, gradually losing speed until it falls 
 again. Comets are perhaps the most wierd, fascinating 
 and mysterious of all celestial bodies; certainly to those 
 who have but their eyes with which to investigate the 
 wonders of space. There is nothing so startling as these 
 sudden and formerly unheralded visitors, unless it is the 
 short moment of a total eclipse, of the sun. Altho they 
 are so light and gaseous as to have almost no influence of 
 attraction, even upon the smallest visible asteroids, yet 
 superstitious fears are always kindled among the igno- 
 rant, upon the arrival of a new comet or the return of an 
 old one. In olden days they were looked upon by the 
 people, as heralds of all kinds of dire calamities ; and were 
 always a harvest time for the priesthood. The Romans, 
 however, had a beautiful belief that the great comet 
 which followed the death of Julius Ceasar, was a heaven- 
 ly chariot sent to convey his spirit to the gods. An old 
 English writer says: 
 
 140 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 141 
 
142 THE PBOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 Cometes signifie corruptions of the ayge. They are signs of earth- 
 quakes, warres, chaynging kyngdoms, 'great tlearthe of corn, yea, a 
 common death of man and beastie. Experiance is an eminent evidence, 
 that a comete, like a sword, portendeth warre; and a harry or a comete 
 with a beard denoteth the death of kyngs. 
 
 It is this appendix of hair and beard of comets now 
 known as tails that I wish to discuss in the light of science 
 and more especially in the light of the new theory of a 
 procession of planets. You will remember it has been 
 shown how the gas of expanded matter leaves or is forced 
 by expansion up from the sun, by the swift disintegration 
 of matter into gas. This outward force of expanding gas 
 or heat radiation at or near the sun, is evinced by the co- 
 rona of a total eclipse. It is even measurable at the earth, 
 but continually slower as it leaves the sun, as there is 
 more space to fill with gas in each succeeding orbit of the 
 same width. Now let us examine the motion which a light 
 body like a comet would recieve from this outward or up- 
 ward motion from the sun. First a comet is always 
 traveling at enormous speed before it reaches the vicinity 
 of this fiery gas which throws a fiery shadow away from 
 the sun, the outer end of which (shadow) must travel 
 thousands of times faster than the comet itself because 
 the outer end of the. tail is describing a circle in some 
 cases millions of miles greater than the comet's nucleus. 
 The comet itself travels sometimes with almost the speed 
 of light; therefore we cannot wonder that the end of the 
 tail which must travel thru thousands of times more 
 space, should be bent backwards in the shape of a sword. 
 The closer a comet comes to the sun, therefore, the great- 
 er must be the illumination because the greater is the 
 speed of both the comet and the outgoing gas which are 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 143 
 
 thus meeting at increasing speeds, making the shadowy 
 tail of light, still longer and more curved. 
 
 Charles Heintz, of San Pedro, Calif., in his "Common- 
 sense Theory of the Universe, " gives the best explanation 
 of the reason why a comet's tail is always pointing from 
 the sun, that I have ever seen. He says on page 12: 
 
 * * * The secret of this rests in the fact that the light of the 
 sun being so much lighter than the fire, the sparks and firelight lying 
 under the greater light of the sun, cannot be seen by us if such fire is 
 removed. In the same manner and for the same reason, only the sparks 
 lying in the shadow of the comet 's nuclei are seen. 
 
 What solid matter there is in a comet 's wake, continues 
 in the orbit of the nucleus or head, but without illumina- 
 tion; and, being so small and lighter than the nucleus, 
 falls farther and farther behind, finally becoming me- 
 teoric matter to fall on other celestial bodies as meteors. 
 
 Fig. 33- -Comet's tail. 
 
144 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 It is generally supposed by astronomers that some 
 comets are not permanent members of our solar system. 
 This error is due to calculating the partial orbit of a 
 comet at its perihelion or nearest curve around the sun, 
 where its speed is the greatest in its entire orbit, making 
 centrifugal force so strong that it leaves the sun before it 
 can finish the perihelion curve of an ellipse. The follow- 
 ing is a quotation from Gillett and Rolf's Astronomy, 
 page 291: 
 
 * * * Since an ellipse is a closed curve, all comets that move in 
 ellipses, no matter how 'eccentric, are permanent members of the solar 
 system and will return to the sun at intervals of greater or less length, 
 according to the size of the ellipse and the rate of the comet's motion. 
 Parabola and hyperbola curves, being open curves, comets that move in 
 either of these curves are only temporary members of our solar system. 
 After passing the sun, they move off into space never to return, unless 
 deflected hither by the action of some heavenly body they pass on their 
 journey. 
 
 Of course this looks reasonable enough and the mathe- 
 matical calculation would confirm it, if it were not for the 
 fact that a comet continually looses its speed as it is 
 thrown up from the sun by the immense centrifugal force 
 that was generated in its fall. It was the centrifugal 
 force caused by the immense speed it gained in falling 
 that forced it to make a parabola or hyperbola curve and 
 these forced curves could only last until the speed slack- 
 ened enough to weaken the centrifugal farce, when it must 
 come back to the curve of an ellipse. The fact that its 
 dropping down towards the sun, gives it the great speed 
 with which it passes partially around the sun in its peri- 
 helion, is sufficient proof that it must loose its speed and 
 therefore, centrifugal force again, as this speed throws 
 
THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 145 
 
 it up from the sun. Not only is this proved by analogy, 
 but by measuring the increase, of speed as it falls toward 
 the sun and the same ratio of decreasing speed as it is 
 thrown up again by this acceleration of speed. By com- 
 paring the rate of speed when leaving the sun, with,say 
 100,000,000 miles from the sun, any good mathematical 
 astronomer should be able to determine accurately how 
 far it must travel before coming to a standstill, or making 
 the same short curve which it made at the sun. At its 
 aphelion it has almost lost its centrifugal force, because 
 it has lost its speed; but it has not and never can lose its 
 orbital motion, therefore must close its orbit at its outer or 
 
 Fig. 34, The great, nebula? in Orion which is the the nucleus of the 
 next world which will follow Neptune to the Sun. 
 
 upper end with the same curve it made at the sun, but, in 
 immensely longer time. What its great speed forced it 
 to do at the sun, by centrifugal force, its lack of speed 
 forces it to do at the far away aphelion curve. It is a 
 self evident fact that if a comet is at comparative rest in 
 far away space it will gradually move towards the near- 
 est sun of greatest attraction, slowly at first but gradually 
 
146 THE PKOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 faster and faster, until it reaches the greatest speed at 
 perihelion. The farther it fell, the greater its speed ; and 
 the greater its speed the more open the perihelion curve, 
 because of its greater centrifugal force and it is thrown 
 off at such an obtuse angle tfiat it could never enclose an 
 orbit if the same speed were kept up. This speed how- 
 ever, not being kept up, it gradually loses its centrifugal 
 force as it loses its speed, and comes gradually back to 
 its original orbit and must make the same curve which it 
 made at the sun. 
 
 We can watch and measure the increasing and decreas- 
 ing speed of any celestial body which travels in an ellip- 
 tical orbit, such as our own orbit around the sun, the orbit 
 of our satellite around the earth or of the planet Mercury. 
 These increase their speed as they approach their peri- 
 helion and decrease as they rise again towards then 
 aphelion as I have shown you in the figure. 
 
 The reason we cannot watch a comet close its orbit at 
 aphelion, is because its slow speed at that end makes no 
 illumination and the body itself is so small and at such a 
 great distance, that no telescope is able to reveal it. The 
 idea that any celestial body which is once attracted to 
 make an orbit around the sun, could thereby gain speed 
 sufficient to throw it higher than the attraction of the sun, 
 into the region of the attraction of some other sun, is as 
 ridiculous and unscientific as to attempt to lift oneself 
 over the fence by the bootstraps and is a mathematical 
 impossibility. Astronomical curves of orbits take cave 
 of themselves on lines of least resistance, (which will soon 
 be admitted), by generating and losing centrifugal force. 
 
 When once a body forms from expanded gas of matter 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 t 
 147 
 
 from the sun, it can never gain speed enough to get away 
 from the sun and the more eccentric its orbit, the more it 
 is retarded by its forced curve at perihelion. This is 
 fully illustrated and proved by the action of both Fay's 
 and Encke's comets. There can be no possibility of any 
 matter which comes from the sun, ever leaving the influ- 
 ence of the sun's gravity. It may fall back around the 
 
 Fig. 35. Port Los Angeles, three miles from Santa Monica, and about 
 twenty miles from Los Angeles, showing the longest wharf in the world, 
 about a mile in length, to deep water. Showing rising coast- 
 
 sun with almost the speed of lightning and yet as soon as 
 it leaves the vicinity of the sun, or is thrown up again by 
 centrifugal force, the attraction of that great central body 
 is pulling and trying to draw it back and back it must 
 come sooner or later, while each returning trip must be 
 made in less time and shorter orbits. 
 
 Since it has been proved beyond doubt that some of the 
 comets (notably Encke's and Fay's), our own moon, the 
 rings of Saturn and the planet Mercury are actually 
 
148 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 shortening their orbits, a great deal has been said about 
 "the resisting medium. " The truth seems to have been 
 gradually dawning upon real astronomers, that celestial 
 bodies do not forever follow the same path; and they, 
 therefore, are looking for a "resisting medium" with 
 which to check the advance of these bodies, so they may 
 travel more slowly and be allowed to fall to the center of 
 their orbits. They will however never find a body in 
 space traveling more slowly as it falls, because fall- 
 ing always increases the speed and it would be impos- 
 sible for it to do otherwise. It is only when a comet or 
 other body is receding from the sun in an eliptic orbit 
 that it decreases its speed. When Newton discovered the 
 force of gravity, he discovered the resisting medium 
 which shortens the orbit of every celestial body, from the 
 size of an atom of crystallized dust to the sun which would 
 fill our solar system with its immense bulk. Gravity is a 
 drawing or contracting power which holds or draws a 
 body back towards the center from which it came and it 
 should not take much of a philosopher to understand 
 what medium of resistance shortens an orbit, now that 
 they have found that orbits do shorten. With this im- 
 mense power of gravity pulling against the earth, trying 
 to pull it to the sun, what equally great power could push 
 or keep it away from the sun? It is claimed that the 
 speed of a celestial body keeps it away by overcoming 
 the force of gravity. On the face of it this is a fallacy; 
 for then, what great power could keep up its speed? 
 There must needs be a constant power applied to over- 
 come a constant pulling power towards the sun. Not 
 only does a "resisting medium" fail to resist and check 
 
PROCESSION OF PLANETS 149 
 
 its speed but constantly increases this speed the nearer a 
 planet comes to the sun, or the nearer a moon comes to a 
 planet. It could not have this speed and constantly in- 
 crease it, except by falling; the power that gives every 
 celestial body its ever increasing speed as it nears its 
 center. Astronomers not understanding this, have been in 
 the habit of speaking and thinking of the speed of a celes- 
 tial body as being imparted to it by some unknown first 
 cause, giving it a mighty push or throw into space, and 
 they have let it go at that. Now, if they will drop this 
 idea of a first great energy which, if unrenewed, must di- 
 minish, and see that this energy is caused simply by fall- 
 ing they will see that it is self-creative and self -operating. 
 The energy of falling has operated stronger on Mercury 
 than upon Neptune, because it has acted longer; thus 
 causing Mercury to be traveling ten times faster than 
 Neptune. Thus we see it is really reduced to a question 
 of weight. We also see that whatever power or energy 
 was required to expand matter to the height of Neptune 's 
 orbit, will be reproduced when it returns to the sun. 
 
XV. 
 
 MATHEMATICAL PROOF OF A PROCESSION. 
 
 There is a strange sequence or ratio between the speed 
 with which the planets travel and their distance from the 
 sun which is absolute proof of their continual falling to 
 the sun. I have already given the table of ratio, which 
 is Bode's law and is the table by which the missing aster- 
 oids were discovered. Commencing at Mercury we ap- 
 proximately double the distance to reach the next planet 
 and so on; each one about twice as far away as the last. 
 Why should the planets be arranged in this perfect ratio 
 thru space, if there is not a good reason for it ? Of course 
 it does not happen by chance, because there is no chance 
 and changing mind in nature to interfere with the law of 
 their arrangements. They simply follow the line of least 
 resistance back to the sun. Commencing at Neptune and 
 coming in towards the sun, we find the same ratio in the 
 increase of their speed along their orbits that we have in 
 their distance from the sun; and little Mercury is travel- 
 ing ten times as fast as slowfooted Neptune, which, while 
 almost one hundred times as far away as Mercury, has 
 comparatively only begun to fall. 
 
 Let us compare the speed and distance of these planets 
 that we may be prepared to make a law, or rather to un- 
 derstand the simple law which they follow, have always 
 followed and must follow forever. The table below 
 
 150 
 
THE PBOCESSION OP PLANETS 151 
 
 shows the distance of each planet from the sun and its 
 speed along its orbit. 
 
 Planet Miles per day Distance to Sun 
 
 Mercury 2,454,500 36,000,000 
 
 Venus 1,860,000 67,000,000 
 
 Earth 1,260,000 93,000,000 
 
 Mars 1,100,000 141,000,000 
 
 Asteroids 811,000 240,000,000 
 
 Jupiter 660,000 483,000,000 
 
 Saturn 490,000 885,000,000 
 
 Uranus 350,000 1,770,000,000 
 
 Neptune 274,000 2,800,000,000 
 
 With the above table for a basis, does not the greater 
 speed of the nearer planets to the sun, prove that they 
 have been farther away some time in the past? Take 
 Mercury for example, which moves at the rate of two and 
 a half millions miles per day. This must prove one of 
 two things ; it was not thrown out from the sun as a mass, 
 in which case it would only move at the rate of the sun's 
 equator, or else it was much farther away and has gained 
 its great speed by falling towards the sun. 
 
 At the slow rate of speed at which Neptune travels, 
 there is very little centrifugal force against it, and it 
 drops towards the sun 1,500,000,000 miles in 400,000,000 
 years, while Mercury moving at such enormous speed, 
 only nears the sun 16,000,000 miles during the same time, 
 because the checking power of centrifugal force is so 
 much greater. To be sure the force of gravity is also 
 much greater at Mercury than at Neptune but centrifugal 
 force is not equal to the force of gravity, as was supposed 
 
12 THE PEOCBSSION OF 
 
 by Newton. While Neptune is coming in towards the 
 sun 1,500,000,000 miles, Uranus only comes in half as far, 
 because its speed is doubled; thus adding centrifugal 
 force and checking its approach to the sun that much. 
 Therefore we find them shortening their orbits and in- 
 creasing their speed as they approach the sun. 
 As a planet moves around the sun in an ellipse, it travels 
 faster when on that part of its orbit, where it is approach- 
 ing the sun, and more slowly where receeding as we have 
 already seen. Comets are an excellent example of this 
 law. As they drop towards the sun in a more nearly 
 straight line than any other body they gain speed more 
 rapidly as they fall and also lose their speed more rap- 
 idly when thrown up again by the enormous centrifugal 
 force. Comets are governed by the same laws that gov- 
 ern planets, but upon an exaggerated scale, which offers 
 us the opportunity to measure the exact difference be- 
 tween the force of gravity and centrifugal force. In the 
 case of Encke's comet, this shortening of its orbit meas- 
 ured in time, is about three hours in an orbit of three 
 years. If a planet is one million miles nearer the sun, than 
 formerly, it has fallen that far altlio it may have taken 
 ages of circling in a great decreasing or spiral orbit and 
 it has gained speed in accordance with the laws of falling 
 bodies minus the check it receives from centrifugal force. 
 
 Considering all the facts now before us, we find the law 
 governing their speed and distance from the sun is per- 
 fectly plain; so plain, in fact, that if one is missing we can 
 find its scattered remains with a camera, where the law 
 would place it. The law then, is this: 
 
 The planets increase their speed along their orbits by 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 153 
 
 i'alling towards the sun, in the same inverse ratio with 
 which they decrease the diameter of their orbits. 
 
 Commencing at Mercury with our ratio of distance we 
 could go on doubling the distance according to Bode's 
 ratio 12 more times out from Neptune's orbit and yet be 
 within the sun's influence of gravity, halfway to Alpha 
 Centura. 
 
 We know the weight of both Neptune and the sun and 
 their distance from each other; therefore we know the 
 value of attraction of gravity between them. By finding 
 the relative value of centrifugal force and the force of 
 gravity, by means of comets, we can soon be able to estab- 
 lish the age of planets and satellites. 
 
 Fig. 36. 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE CRUST OF THE EARTH. 
 
 Judging by the volcanoes which emit molten lava; by 
 the increase of heat as holes are bored to great depths, 
 and by the appearance of stratas of different ages; it is 
 supposed that the earth has been a molten mass and has 
 cooled to the depth of about fifty miles. 
 
 This is also surmised by the condition of other planets 
 and bodies in space, which are of different ages and 
 stages of heating or cooling. 
 
 I have referred to this in other chapters and am con- 
 tent to refer you to geologists who have made that sub- 
 ject a life study. Evolution is also a profitabe study, 
 showing how life has developed since the surface of the 
 earth commenced to cool on up thru the different stratas 
 to the present time. 
 
 Outside of what I have already shown you of the prob- 
 able cause of the glacial period, I have no objections to 
 the general opinion of geologists and evolutionists, ex- 
 cept upon the subject of oil and coal. 
 
 I have had many years experience and study upon these 
 subjects and more especially on the subject of coal forma- 
 tions. Many years ago I began the study of coal forma- 
 tion on the Pacific Coast and discovered that the prevail- 
 ing idea that coal was formed ages ago from vast depos- 
 ites of timber and other bodies of buried vegetation, is an 
 
 154 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 155 
 
 error. It would be impossible for this to be the case, be- 
 cause it could not be buried in a body and be free enough 
 from dirt and foreign matter to form coal, unless there 
 was some agency to purify it after it was buried under 
 drift. Studying and experimenting upon the subject, I 
 found instead of being a finished product of remote ages, 
 it is a continual process. Coal is still being deposited in 
 the bottom of seas and lakes, the same as in former ages 
 and is growing better and better continually. 
 
 The difference of the quality of the coal found wast of 
 the Sierra Nevada range of mountains, with its exten- 
 sions and the coal found east of this range as far as the 
 summit of the Rocky Mountains, attracted my attention 
 a number of years ago following a considerable experi- 
 ence with and study of coal, at Elsinore, San Diego Coun- 
 ty, California, and a careful analysis of that subject in 
 connection with other substances, finally laid the foun- 
 dation in my mind, out of which evolved the discovery 
 of a Procession of Planets. 
 
 Beginning with the western Pacific coast or that por- 
 tion west of the great Sierra Nevada range, thru North 
 America and west of the Andes thru South America, we 
 find the land has, comparatively, recently come up from 
 the western ocean and is gradually rising; so much in- 
 deed that there are but few harbors south of the state 
 of Washington, altho we find outlines of harbors, inland 
 from the coast, oyster beds on the foothills, belts of pe- 
 troleum and many other sure evidences of its recent sub- 
 mersion. In all this region we find basins of coal of a 
 very inferior quality and of recent formation. Indeed* 
 it can scarcely be classed as coal except for the reason 
 
156 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 Fig. 37.- Spiral Nebula in Canis Venatici- 
 
 that it is the raw material or mud from which coal is final- 
 ly evolved. The coals at Elsinore, Tuscon, Mt. Diablo, 
 Tessler and other points along the coast west of the Si- 
 erras are of the same recent formation, readily decom- 
 posing when exposed to the air, and sufficiently charged 
 with oil and gas to cause spontaneous combustion while 
 still in the mines if the airways are not properly laid 
 ^out, so as to counteract instead of augment the genera- 
 tion of electricity which is heat. 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 157 
 
 The chemical analysis of these coals average about as 
 follows: Moisture 13.55; fixed carbon, 26.65; volatile 
 gases, 36.50; sulphur, 4.05; ash, 19.25. The sand in which 
 they occur, shows a very recent formation when com- 
 pared with the old sandstones of the Mojave desert, east 
 of the Sierras. Their shales are so highly charged with 
 petroleum that they are easily lighted when held to a 
 lighted match. The roofs and floors scarcely take the 
 dignity of age due even to fire clays, much less soapstone 
 or slate, and are still more or less mixed up and impure. 
 In this region of recent sumbersion, we find many belts 
 of petroleum, for which we must always look in most re- 
 cent formations inasmuch as it is perhaps, the most tem- 
 porary and easily set free of any mineral in nature. Be- 
 ing lighter than water and easily converted into gas, it is 
 always being driven from place to place under pressure 
 and ready to escape at the first opportunity offered by a 
 volcanic or earthquake crack. It is scarcely ever found 
 in old formations which have stood the change of ages. 
 
 Going east of the Sierras, across the great interior 
 basin, to the summit of the Eocky Mountain range, we 
 find a much older formation of sandstone, with a much 
 older and purer coal formation. No oil or soft coal of 
 the western coast is found, save in certain basins of re- 
 cent inland seas. The coal is of a bright, pure quality 
 of Lignite, such as is found at Gallup, New Mexico; 
 Randsburg, California; Yellowstone Park, Wyoming; 
 parts of Utah, Colorado, Nevada and other states and 
 territories of the Great Basin. All these coals show 
 about the same age, purity and general quality ; and must 
 have been raised from the sea at nearly the same time; 
 
158 
 
 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 Fig. 38. 
 
 perhaps cut off by the Sierra Nevada range, and the low- 
 er basins remaining inland seas for ages, as the Great 
 Salt Lake still testifies. The average analysis of these 
 coals is as follows: Moisture, 8.25; volatile gases, 35.32; 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 159 
 
 fixed carbon, 45.37; sulphur, 2.06; ash, 9.00. This is the 
 analysis of the coal in the large veins recently found at 
 Randsburg, California, 
 
 The great difference in purity and quality of the two 
 kinds of coal, shows us that during the millions of years 
 since the latter came out of the sea, some powerful agent 
 has been at work purifying it; drawing it together and 
 abstracting those materials which are not carbon, but 
 which are now found in layers above and below it. But, 
 it is still far from being the best of coal; and when we 
 go now to the basin known as the Mississippi valley, be- 
 tween the Rocky and Allegheny ranges, we find a forma- 
 tion still more pure and condensed, than the Lignite coal 
 west of the Rockies, showing that the process of separa- 
 tion and purification has been going on for millions of 
 years and still goes on. 
 
 Still farther east, beyond the summit of the Alleghen- 
 ies we find anthracite coal; the oldest and purest per- 
 haps, that nature can produce. Its clay and soapstones 
 are hard and its sandstones so ancient that they can 
 hardly be told from the metamorphic rock. Here it is 
 again sinking into the sea, not for the first time per- 
 haps, for who can tell how many times nature takes mat- 
 ter around the same cycles on a plane, in the course of 
 a hundred million years. 
 
 After a molten planet commences to cool and form a 
 crust, according to the Processional Theory, there is a 
 force at work separating matter into its elements. This 
 force which for the sake of argument, I have called 
 gravity is crystallization, polarization, or that force or 
 attraction which always attracts 'Mike to like." It is 
 
160 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 not impossible that magnetic attraction lias a great in- 
 fluence in this purification of coal and other elements of 
 matter, nor at all improbable when we bring to mind the 
 wonderful experiments of Prof. Elmer Gates, who show- 
 ed that electricity is actually a common carrier of ma- 
 terial (see Everybody's Magazine, May, 1901). We need 
 not be surprised if that ever active, ever present agent is 
 not also largely responsible for the well known attrac- 
 tion of "like to like." Whatever the assistant force 
 may be which helps to do the work of purification, we 
 have here* in these four great divisions of coal of suc- 
 cessive ages, the unmistakable evidence of its perfect 
 work. First we see the muddy beds of soft newly form- 
 ed valueless coal, just raised from the western sea; sec- 
 ond the lignites of the Great Basin; third, the bitumin- 
 ous coal of the Mississippi valley, and, fourth, the An- 
 thracite coal of the eastern coast; each one purer, bet- 
 ter, older and harder than the one following. Will any 
 philosopher or scientist have the hardihood to believe 
 that anthracite coal was always as pure from foreign 
 matter as it is now, or that the western coast "dirty 
 coal ' ' will never become pure ? We cannot even imagine 
 a deposit of any material that would make coal in a suf- 
 ficiently pure state to be anthracite. Even Prof. Vail's 
 "Annular Theory" of falling carbon could not provide 
 for the sinking of carbon to the bottom of seas, unless it 
 was mixed with heavier material, at first. A growth of 
 timber 100 feet thick could not be covered with drift 
 without being penetrated in every part by sand and dirt ; 
 the soil it grew in, would be mixed thru it and its rotten 
 logs and leaves would be more ash than carbon. Such a 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 161 
 
 supposition would not be tenable even in the case of pure 
 asphaltum or peat, the specific gravity of which would 
 not permit it to settle on the bottom of seas where strata 
 must first form from vegetable matter. The coal beds 
 which are forever forming in the basins of the seas and 
 lakes are composed of any kind of vegetation, leaves, and 
 fortified by the growths it generates in the sea, and the 
 graveyards of marine life. At first these beds containing 
 
 Fig. 39. Viewlin the Milky Way. 
 
162 THE PKOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 carbon must be attracted to the richest point by the proc- 
 esses with which gravity (?) does its work, drawing the 
 carbon closer together, drawing out the clays, in layers or 
 veins by themselves and leaving the sands to form sand- 
 stone in layers. The oil is also drawn into a separated 
 condition, distilled, no doubt, by the heat pressure as il- 
 lustrated by Wm. Plotts, in his book, ' ' The Formation of 
 Coal and Petroleum/' 
 
 In order to convince us that these coal veins are drawn 
 together and purified from beds of mud, is it not enough 
 to examine these four coal divisions of the United States, 
 the ages of their formation and their degrees of purity? 
 We know that other substances contained in bodies of 
 drift, are always changing and gathering into seams. 
 The most noticeable of these, perhaps, is lime which, as 
 spars of different kinds we find being drawn into little 
 seams even in very recent drift; and this being the case, 
 why not the same with coal? This certainly holds good 
 in the case of all elements which have been mixed by 
 water in the formation drift. In very recent drifts I have 
 noted little seams of lime forming; all the lime on both 
 sides of the seams for many feet being drawn into the 
 seams. To prove that it is doing so, it is only necessary 
 to follow a seam down and observe that it grows wider 
 and wider as the drift below grows older and older. I 
 mention lime as an example because it is usually more 
 plentiful in drift and seems to be the first element to 
 respond to the attracting force and show this chemical 
 action. In the case of coal, the stratas lay horizontal 
 to the curvature of the earth attracting from above 
 and below at the strata where the mud is richest in car- 
 
THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 163 
 
 bon and gradually abstract all the carbon within ten or 
 twenty feet above and below. Next to the coal, the silica 
 gathers, forming clays; the sand thus being left to itself, 
 becomes almost pure sandstone. There is also almost 
 always iron in some form; this usually gathers together 
 in some strata of the sandstone in the form of sulphides 
 of iron from which is made sulphuric acid. In this west- 
 ern count ry, this strata of iron when not rich enough 
 to make a solid strata is usually made up of balls of 
 iron crystals of all sizes, round in form and sometimes 
 crowding each other so much as to cause indentures in 
 the later formations by those that formed first. These 
 are called by miners sulphur balls; and are exceedingly 
 hard annoying miners and drillers of oil wells by break- 
 ing drills and well tools. They are so hard that, when 
 exposed by erosion of wash, they often stand for centur- 
 ies protecting the sandstone directly beneath them from 
 the rain till they appear like huge mushrooms. One ex- 
 ample of this is seen in the Heald coal field near Kands- 
 burg. It is some twenty feet high, the sulphur ball at 
 the top eight feet in diameter, the column itself grad- 
 ually tapering from the sulphur ball at the top to a much 
 larger diameter near the ground where it has been ex- 
 posed a shorter time. There are dozens of these " stone 
 trees " or * i mushrooms ' ' in this coal district; they are 
 of all sizes and millions of them have often fallen in great 
 piles. Since discovering the coal fields near Eandsburg 
 in 1895, I have found other absolute proof of this motion 
 of matter which attracts like to like. In November, 1903, 
 I had occasion to visit the coal mines in company with 
 an agent identified with steel and coal interests. While 
 
164 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 40, 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 165 
 
 waiting at the little station of Kramer, on the Mojave 
 desert, we had the pleasure of meeting an old friend of 
 mine who had his hands and pockets full of what he 
 termed "petrified yucca" which he had just gathered, 
 and would, he informed us, ' ' burn like coal, ' ' and which 
 we found to be the case. Now it is a well-known fact that 
 ordinary dead yucca wood, altho very light, will extin- 
 guish the best fire that desert fuel will make; so we were 
 of course greatly interested. Upon examination, we 
 found this new fuel to be actually, coal. The yucca, be- 
 ing carbon, had acted as a center, drawn upon the soil 
 for carbon, and become filled with coal. Investigating 
 further, we found the best of it had been partially buried 
 in the soil ; but, in many cases we found dead yucca trees 
 thirty to forty feet high, carbonized as high as four feet 
 from the ground. This phenomenon of coal forming 
 under our eyes, from carbon in the soil, is positive proof 
 that coal purifies itself from mud, carrying vegetation or 
 carbon in any shape, drawing and purifying itself from 
 deposits of mud, and that it will always do so, as long 
 as rain falls upon the earth, carrying vegetable deposits 
 of carbon into the seas or lakes. 
 
 There are certain conditions under which anthracite 
 may and does exist in the Great Basin, between the Si- 
 erra Nevada and Eocky mountain ranges. Prof. Bailey 
 of the California State Geological force, informs me of 
 several such occurrences observed by himself; one in 
 Mexico, one in Wyoming and one near Gallup in New 
 Mexico. He is of the opinion that the same will be the 
 case with the coal in the Kandsburg mines, as the lower 
 vein there indicates by breaking in curves like glass. 
 
166 THE PBOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 These anthracites are not caused by age, but by condi- 
 tions of heat which have existed where volcanoes have 
 come up thru the coal formations as is the case at the 
 Bandsburg mines. That the mountains of the earth are 
 sometimes raising, is demonstrated by the fact that 
 stratas of comparatively recent sandstones which of 
 course laid level while forming are raised to great 
 heights on mountain sides sometimes pitching almost 
 45 degrees. While prospecting for coal I have found two 
 notable instances of this; one at the northwest end of 
 the Elsinore mountain range in Orange County, Califor- 
 nia, the other on the northwest slope of the Golar moun- 
 tains in Kern County, California. 
 
 Altho the erosion is great, it does not keep pace with 
 these wrinkles formed by a cooling planet. 
 
 Prof. Oscar P. Heinzeil of California declares that throughout the 
 eastern sections of the United States the recent eruptions of Mt. Pelee 
 have caused noticeable elevations. He claims to have discovered places 
 along the sea coast and in the interior where the ground has risen 
 from three to ten feet. Prof. Heinzel says that along the Atlantic coast 
 it is noticeable that the tide does not reach the height it formerly did 
 by from four to ten feet and that as far inland as Harrisburg, Penn., 
 elevations of four feet have been noted. Times. 
 
 If the above is finally confirmed, it is a matter of 
 more interest and importance than seen at first sight. 
 The entire Atlantic coast has been gradually settling 
 into the sea for ages; as shown by its many excellent 
 harbors, while at the same time the Pacific coast has 
 been rising as shown by its lack of harbors. Records 
 kept since the founding of St. Augustine, Florida, show 
 a recorded settling of eight inches during each century. 
 This has no doubt been the result of the weight of water 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 167 
 
 caused by the revolution of the earth from west to east 
 backing it up against the eastern coasts and relieving 
 the western coasts of the same amount of weight. At 
 the isthmus of Panama where it was possible for the 
 government to make an accurate survey, on account of 
 the short distance between the two great oceans, the dif- 
 ference in water levels is 38 feet. To substantiate this 
 theory of the weight of water being the cause of the 
 gradual sinking of eastern coasts and rising of western 
 coasts we must remember that the earth revolves on its 
 axis at the rate of 1000 miles per hour at the equator, 
 where the water would therefore be backed up the high- 
 est on an eastern coast and receded the most on a west 
 ern coast; the difference growing gradually less as we 
 go farther north or south towards the poles, where the 
 earth has little or no axial motion and therefore little or 
 no difference of weight of water on its eastern and 
 western coasts. For this reason we should find eastern 
 coasts at or near the equator settling faster and western 
 coasts rising faster than those farther north or south; 
 and this condition seems to be the case where coasts are 
 running reasonably near north and south. Perhaps if 
 Prof. HeintzePs observations prove to be correct they 
 may be only local; inasmuch as it would take a greater 
 disturbance than the Mt. Pelee eruption to suddenly 
 raise the entire Atlantic coast, contrary to natural 
 forces by means of which it must steadily incline to 
 sink. 
 
 The terrible volcanic disasters in the British West 
 Indies in 1902 whereby tens of thousands of human be- 
 ings were swept suddenly out of existence, has called 
 
168 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 forth many conflicting opinions from scientists as to the 
 probable cause. The most general opinion seems to be 
 that it was an explosion caused by water flowing from 
 the sea into subterranean caverns, where it was ex- 
 panded into steam under such tremendous pressure that 
 it could no longer be held in bounds; therefore seeking 
 the highest point in the vicinity for release. Does it not 
 seem rather that it would seek the weakest point, the 
 
 Fig. 41. 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 169 
 
 crevices, for instance, thru which the water gained 
 access! The fact that the trouble was not local, but 
 that the disturbance took effect at the same time hun- 
 dreds of miles distant, would indicate a general dis- 
 turbance of the molten matter under a large section 
 of the earth's crust; thus being only one of the perfectly 
 natural and necessary occurrences peculiar to the ciust 
 of a cooling planet. This contraction naturally forces 
 the molten matter out thru volcanoes which seem to 
 be the original ventholes left when the crust first 
 formed; and which have built themselves and the coun- 
 try around them up higher and higher during each suc- 
 cessive eruption. Hon. Austin Young of Randsburg, 
 California, who is a deep analytical thinker, says in 
 Higher Science of November, 1902 : 
 
 * * * The theory of ocean water running into molten lava or 
 into hot cavities of volcanoes and causing them to explode, as ad- 
 vanced by scientists generally, seems to me to be absurd. In the first 
 place, the natural gravitation of mud, sand and other debris in the s'ea, 
 with the weight of water above, would fill up all such crevices. In the 
 second place if there were fresh cracks from below, then the action of 
 the volcano must have started before the water got in at all. Even if 
 there was a crevice and the water rushed in suddenly, there would be 
 but a small explosion about like a dynamite mine, as the explosion 
 must come at once when the water first touched the molten matter. 
 In the compact state of the earth we can see that there is no chance for 
 any large body of water to come suddenly in contact with a great body 
 of molten matter, as you can see by throwing a bucket of water into 
 a caldron of melted iron. If there isi such a thing as a molten inside 
 to the earth, the water would be instantly driven away from it by heat 
 and it would be comparatively cool before the water could come in 
 actual contact, except in cases where the molten lava overflowed from 
 volcanoes and ran into it. 
 
 Of all the guesses I have seen, attempting to account 
 
170 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 for earthquakes, there has not been much that is really 
 instructive, or to the point. Most of the scientists have 
 agreed that the earth is cooling from a molten state and 
 that the buckling of the surface and raising of moun- 
 tains is the cause of them. This is evidently not the 
 case, because mountains raise very slowly and gradual- 
 ly and no one could possibly perceive such a gradual 
 motion. There are no doubt two kinds of earthquakes, 
 both of which I have observed hundreds of times on the 
 Pacific coast and they are both due to violent electrical 
 disturbances; one in the atmosphere entirely and the 
 other in the earth. The most common earthquake which 
 I have observed is a product of desert countries and 
 happens during what is called "earthquake weather.* 1 
 I have heretofore explained that heat and electricity, 
 in fact, all forces are the same with the exception of 
 faster or slower vibrations of force. There is a point be- 
 tween heat and electricity where heat cooling changes 
 to electricity, and this may take place as heat radiates 
 from the earth's center toward the surface where great 
 bodies become overcharged and later discharge into the 
 atmosphere or clouds which are overcharged with the 
 opposite polarity. 
 
 Cooling is a process of gravity and magnetism is a 
 result or part of cooling and must be taken into con- 
 sideration for the action of magnets and magnetic 
 needles. Considering these facts then in connection 
 with the violent shaking of the earth, we may. be sure 
 that there is some connection, by the balancing of the 
 positive and negative electricity contained in the earth 
 and the atmosphere. I have often seen the tops of hills 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 171 
 
 nearest the clouds blown out during storms when the 
 electricity evidently discharged from the earth into the 
 clouds. Usually the clouds are overcharged and dis- 
 charge into the earth; but this is not always the case. 
 
 I am investigating this subject and collecting data 
 which Iwill furnish to readers of my magazine, l i Higher 
 Science/' from time to time. One of the strange things 
 I have lately discovered is that eggs that are almost 
 ready to hatch are killed by earthquakes, or by very 
 heavy thunder showers. This is evidently not caused 
 by the shaking, but by the electrical charge. 
 
 Fig. 42. <Jiant Sequoias, near Mariposa Few travelers in California 
 neglect to visit the celebrated big trees, of which there are several 
 groups, some of them old monarchs of the forest, reaching a height of 
 nearly 400 feet. 
 
xvrt. 
 
 WHAT GREAT MEN HAVE SAID. 
 
 Supporting the new and wonderful theory of a proces- 
 sion of planets, many astronomers, physicists and phi- 
 losophers have given their discovered evidence of its 
 truth; some of them as a sort of prophesy long in ad- 
 vance of its discovery in 1899. Scientists of today will 
 be astonished at this testimony when they find it 
 grouped together and will hardly have the hardihood 
 to deny it, after having read the testimony which fits 
 so perfectly into every part of the discovery of a pro 
 cession of these celestial bodies toward the center of 
 their convergency. 
 
 In his "Terrestial Magnetism, " Prof. Procter says: 
 
 Interesting as are the bonds of union which Copernicus, Kepler 
 and Newton have traced in the relations of our solar system, it would 
 seem as tho we were approaching the traces of a yet more wonderful 
 law of association. 
 
 Speaking as a real prophet, Prof. Agasis, the great 
 American scientist, once said: 
 
 * W'h-en the Unitary Science comes it will be something so entirely 
 aside from our fixed habit of thought, that it will find its first appreci- 
 ation, probably, among men of large general Qulture, rather than among 
 men who are specialists in science. 
 
 *(Whiie!h is this Processional Theory of the true motions of matter.) 
 
 It is a noticable fact that the Processional Theory, 
 which has now been discovered and published for six 
 
 172 
 
THE PEOCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 173 
 
 years, has never been accepted by a single scientific in- 
 stitution, altho thousands of liberal free thinkers and 
 people not tied to text-boK)ks by diplomas, perfectly 
 understand and endorse it. The principal reason why 
 specialists do not endorse it is fully explained in the 
 preface of this book. It is because they have received 
 the most of their information from textbooks and their 
 present associations being with societies and schools, 
 
 Fig. 43. Cliff dwelling's at Walnut Canyon, Arizona, nine miles south- 
 east from Flagstaff They occupy a level, high up on either side of a 
 narrow gorge. Relics of the early inhabitants are often found in these 
 caves. 
 
 they do not care to oppose them for fear of losing pres- 
 tige, influence or diplomas. This is a deplorable condi- 
 tion for which there seems to be no remedy except time 
 and new generations. People are like sheep who follow 
 a bell. Associations and societies may be likened to 
 crystallization of matter, because they crystallize ideas 
 until they are fixed or dead and from which it is then 
 hard for even a thinking scientist to break loose. 
 
174 THE PBOCE88ION OF PLANETS 
 
 Referring to the disposition of the sun's radiation of 
 energy and matter, which is the foundation of the new 
 theory or discovery of a procession of planets, Sir "Win. 
 Hershell, the great English astronomer, thinking that 
 light was matter, once said: 
 
 It is probable, nebulae form the material out of which nature 
 elaborates suns and systems and that in virtue of a central gravitation 
 each particle of nebulous matter becomes more and more condensed 
 and assumes a rounder form; it acquires gradually a rotary motion and 
 the condensation goes on increasing, until the mass acquires consist- 
 ency and solidity and all the other qualities of a comet or planet; that 
 by a still further process of condensation the body becomes a real 
 star and that thus the waste of celestial bodies by the perpetual 
 cliff ussion of their light, (he should have said gas or expanded matter), 
 is continually compensated and restored by new formations of such 
 bodies, to replenish forever the universe with planets and suns. (Phil. 
 Trans. 1811). 
 
 Prof. John Tyndal, the late English philosopher and 
 scientist, in his work "Heat As a Mode of- Motion, " 
 page 449, says: 
 
 As surely as the weights of a clock run down to their lowest 
 position, from which they can never rise again unless fresh energy 
 is communicated from some source not yet exhausted, so surely must 
 planet after planet cree-p in age by age towards the sun. 
 
 This shows that Prof. Tyndal realizes by reason and 
 analogy that such a condition was inevitable; but the 
 strange part of it is that he could believe this and not 
 wonder or know what must be the result when they did 
 come into the sun. He was not ignorant of the Mayer 
 theory of the sun being fed by meteors, as he says in 
 the same book, (page 57) : 
 
 * * * Knowleelge suc.h as that you now possess, has caused 
 philosophers in speculating on the mode in which the sun is nourished 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 175 
 
 Fit?. 44. 
 
176 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 and his supply of light and 'heat kept up, to suppose the heat and light 
 to be caused by the showering down of meteoric matter upon 'the sun's 
 surface. Some philosophers suppose the Zodiacal Light to be a cloud of 
 meteorites and from it it is imagined the showering meteor matter may 
 be derived. Now, whatever the value .of this speculation, it is to be 
 borne in min>d that tlie pouring down of meteoric matter in the way 
 indicated, would be competent to produce tire light and heat of the 
 sun. With regard to the probable truth or fallacy of the theory, it is 
 not necessary that I should offer an opinion. I would only say that 
 tlhe theory deals with a cause which if of sufficient operation would be 
 competent to produce the effect ascribed to it. 
 
 Altho Prof. Tyndal did not see fit to put himself on 
 record as endorsing the theory he was careful not to dis- 
 courage its investigation. Being opposed to the emis- 
 sion theory of light, believing it contained no substance 
 and not realizing that the sun is expanding matter into 
 gas of tens of thousands of times greater bulk, he, of 
 course, saw no source from which to keep up the supply 
 of falling matter; therefore hesitated to endorse it. 
 
 If he could have realized this he would at once have 
 perceived the simplicity of the whole working scheme 
 of the solar system and all nature which generates force 
 by the expanding power of heat and the contracting 
 power of cooling. This portion of the theory took such a 
 permanent hold on his mind, however, that he again 
 goes over the entire theory in detail commencing on 
 page 493 of the same work from which the following 
 are extracts: 
 
 There is" another theory which, bold as it may appear at first 
 sight deserves our earnest attention. I have already referred to it a- 
 the meteoric theory of the sun's lieat. Solar space is peopled with 
 ponderous objects: Kepler's celebrated statement that there are more 
 comets in the heavens than there are fishes in the sea, refers to the 
 fact that a small portion only of the comets belonging to our solar 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 177 
 
 system are seen from the earth. But besides comets, planets and 
 moons, there are a numerous class 1 of bodies belonging to our solar 
 Systran asteroids, which from their smallness might be considered as 
 cosmos atoms. Like the planets and comets, these smaller bodies obey 
 the law of gravity and revolve in elliptic orbits around the sun; and it 
 is the}-, when they come within the eartli 's atmosphere that, fired by 
 friction, appear to us as meteors and falling stars. On- a clear night 
 twenty minutes rarely pass at any part of the earth's surface, without 
 the appearance of at least one meteor. At certain times they appear 
 in enormous numbers. During nine hours of observation in Boston, 
 when they were described as falling as thick as snowflakes, 240,000 
 meteors were calculated to have bettn observed. The number falling in a 
 single night upon thei earth might have been estimated at hundreds of 
 thousands of millions. And even these would constitute but a small 
 portion of the total circulating around the sun. * * * 
 
 Though the larger bodies show, in historic times, no diminution 
 of their periods of revolution, this may not hold good for the smaller 
 bodies. In the time 1 required of the earth from th-e sun, to alter a 
 Single yard, a small body may 'have approac'hed thousands of miles nearer 
 our central luminary. Following up these reflections we would infer 
 that while this immeasurable stream of ponderable matter rolls unceas 
 ingly towards the sun, it must augment in density as it approaches its 
 center of convergency and here the conjecture naturally arises that 
 nebulous lights of vast dimensions which embraces the sun the Zo- 
 diacal Light may owe its existence to these crowded meteoric masses. 
 However this may be, it is at least proved that this luminous phe- 
 nomena arises from matter which circulates in obedience to planetary 
 laws; the entire mass constituting the Zodiacal Light must be constantly 
 approaching and incessantly raining its substances down upon the sun. 
 
 His expressed idea that it must augment in density 
 as it approaches its center the sun, sustains the Proces- 
 sional Theory that as a body nears the sun it increases 
 its speed by falling, increasing centrifugal force, so that 
 the diameter of its orbit would shorten more and more 
 slowly, as its speed quickens. He goes on to show 
 how all matter is made fuel in the sun and then he says: 
 
178 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 It matters not therefore, whether the .substances be combus- 
 tible, or not; their being combustible would not add sensibly to the- 
 tremendous heat produced by their mechanical collision. 
 
 Hero then we have an agency competent to restore his lost energy 
 to the sun and to maintain a temperature at his surface which tran- 
 scend all -terrestrial combustion. * * He deals with the true causes 
 
 I do not pledge myself to this theory, nor do I ask you to 
 accept it 'as demonstrated; still it would be a great mistake to regard 
 it as chimerical. It is a noble speculation; and, depend upon it, the 
 true theory if this or some form of it be not the true one will not 
 appear less wild or less astounding. 
 
 Prof. Ernst Haeckel, the great living German astron- 
 omer, says in his "Riddle of the Universe," page 243: 
 
 * Even our mother earth which was formed of part of the 
 gyrating solar system, millions of ages ago, will grow cold and life- 
 less after the lapse of further millions and in gradually narrowing its 
 orbit, will fall eventually into the sun. 
 
 Why then should he not know that in its fall it must 
 restore heat to the sun and why does he not see that 
 in so doing it must be changed into colorless gas, tens 
 of thousands of times greater in bulk and be pushed up 
 into the space beyond Neptune's orbit? 
 
 The following article is a great victory for the Pro- 
 cessional Theory, altho it only admits the possibility 
 that all space may be filled with the gas of expanded 
 matter. 
 
 It thus appears that tire upper stratas, both of the sun 
 and the earth consist of lighter constituents which are largely removed 
 from the lower atmosphere! by their lightness, and no limit can be 
 placed upon the distance to which these elements would travel from 
 the sun or earth into interplanetary space. What is true of the sun 
 and 'earth, is doubtless true of other planets and other suns, and it 
 seems not impossible that even interstellar space may contain these 
 and similar gases, in an almost infinitely 'attenuated condition. What the 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLACETS 179 
 
 C'on-dition of these gases may be at the temperature of interstellar apace,, 
 which cannot be far removed from absolute zero, it is difficult to say. 
 On thra one hand, at such a temperature, they might be expected to be 
 solid; but on the other hand, the particles would be relatively so- 
 few and far a>part from each other that they would have the properties 
 of a gas. Th'e great advance in our knowledge! during the past few 
 years gives promise of much new light in the near future. (Popular 
 Science Monthly, February, 1903). 
 
 The last half of this article is mere speculation, with 
 no facts for a basis, because if gas was in a solid con- 
 dition and its solid atoms far apart, it would no longer 
 be gas; but on the contrary would be crystal clouds, 
 thru which light or heat could not travel to us from 
 other suns. It is positively certain that lighc, heat r 
 electricity, force or any other motion, cannot travel thru 
 an absolute vacuum, which absolute zero would be, for 
 the reason that where there is no matter there can be 
 no motion and where there is absolute zm> there oan be 
 matter. 
 
 Omar Khayyam, the renowned astronomer poet of 
 Persia, who lived about 1000 years ago, ^ays in his 
 "Bubaiyat, or Life Poem:" 
 
 The sages who have compassed sea and land, 
 Their secret to search out a-nd understand 
 My mind misgives me if they CVCT solved 
 The scheme on which this Universe was planned. 
 
 David P. Todd, quoting Dr. See's ideas in his book 
 " Stars and Telescopes," page 252, says: 
 
 Applying the law of binary evolution to the planetary system, Dr. 
 See concludes that the planets were not separated in th'e form of 
 rings, as Laplace supposed, but in the form of lumps or masses which 
 would easily condense into planets and satellites. In this manner he 
 escapes the necessity of explaining how rings would condense into single 
 
180 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 masses; indeed, he maintains that rings would not condense at all but 
 become swarms of small bodies, like those that make up the rings of 
 Saturn and the small planets between Mars and Jupiter. 
 
 The author then proceeded to endorse Dr. See's ideas 
 as the most reasonable advanced (1902). Of course he 
 may never have heard of or read the Processional 
 Theory at that time, but the impossibilities of the Nebu- 
 lar Hypothesis were very apparent to both Dr. See and 
 
 Fitr. 45 Showing 3000 feet wash thru solid granite. 
 
 Prof. Todd, as they are also becoming to many of the 
 leading thinkers. The ridiculous feature of the outside 
 planets traveling faster than the ones nearer the sun, 
 when they should be as they are traveling hundreds 
 of times slower, is dawning upon the minds of all 
 thinkers and forcing astronomers to revise their old 
 worm-eaten text books. By and by the common thinker 
 will force them to see the whole simple truth of a never- 
 
THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 181 
 
 ending procession of planets to centers or suns, where 
 their electric energy is regenerated. 
 
 Chambers' Astronomy has the following sensible 
 paragraph upon the subject of comets shortening their 
 orbits. Vol. L, page 399: 
 
 There is reason to believe that comets in general, for sonre unknown 
 reason, decrease in splendor in each successive revolution. 
 
 In the light of facts shown in the Processional 
 Theory, the " unknown cause" becomes perfectly 
 simple and easily understood. Comets only burn them- 
 selves up, the lighter matter falling farther and farther 
 back as they drop toward the sun, until the splendor 
 wears out and the nucleus burns up; that is to say, ex- 
 pands into gas till there is not enough solid matter in 
 any one place to make an illumination by falling. 
 
 Peabody's Elements of Astronomy, also, in speaking 
 of comets, note 485, says: 
 
 The periods of both Encke's and Fay's comets are 1 diminishing; 
 Enck-e's looses about one day in about eight revolutions. This indi- 
 cates that some cause checks the forward or tangential force of these 
 comets, leaving the radical force of the sun to draw them more swiftly 
 about itsself. Encke supposed they we/re retarded by a resisting 
 medium, or ether, which is most dense near the sun, but Fay's comet 
 is delayed * more than Encke's alt bo its perihelion is much farthor 
 from the sun. Others suggest that comets meet meteoric ston-es and that 
 Fay's as its orbit is farther from the sun, encounters most of these 
 obstacles. Should the hmdexance, whatever it may be, act long enough, 
 they must finally disappear in the sun. 
 
 The fact is they shorten their orbits for the same 
 reason and by the same law that planets do; but they 
 are so small and have such eccentric orbits they actually 
 
 * (Its orbit is larger). 
 
182 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 shorten them in a measurable degree in one or more 
 orbits, often during the lifetime of a human being, thus 
 giving us an exaggerated scale from which to figure. 
 The reason why Fay's comet nears the sun faster than 
 Encke's is because it is farther out, therefore moves 
 more slowly and does not have so much centrifugal 
 force to check its approach, which, as we have seen, is 
 governed by exactly the same law that planets obey in 
 their approach to the sun and that moons obey in their 
 approach to their planets. 
 
 Prof. Whewell, in his Bridgewater Treatise, page 128, 
 ;says of shortening orbits: 
 
 The fact really is that changes are taking place in the motions of 
 "heavenly bodies which have gone on progressively from the first dawn 
 of science. the moon 'has been moving quicker from the time 
 
 of the first recorded eclipses and is now in advance about four times 
 her diameter, of where her own place would have been, if it had not 
 been affected by this acceleration. * * * the obliquity of its ellipse 
 is also in a state* of diminution and is now almost two-fifths of a degree 
 less than it was in the time of Aristotle. 
 
 Thus we have additional proof that the moon is in- 
 creasing her speed and shortening her orbit, as all other 
 celestial bodies must be doing and as has been amply 
 proven in the preceding pages by hosts of harmonious 
 statements, as well as by figures which " never lie." 
 The same infallible law of falling increases her speed 
 and brings her nearer to the earth, and all matter both 
 in the solar system and universe moves by the same law 
 of falling. 
 
 Prof. Edgar K Larkin of Mt. Lowe Observatory, Pas- 
 adena, California, who has been familiar with the 
 
THE PKOCES81ON OF PLANETS 183 
 
 theory of a procession of planets since its discovery, 
 says: 
 
 Altho the prophesy business is risky, the assertion is 
 ventured here that the discoveries in science will be so great as to upset 
 all our conceits. Some rockhewn foundation law is near, beside which 
 all our present laws will be little by-laws. 
 
 Prof. Lowell, in his new book entitled "The Solar 
 System/' while speaking of the age of planets, says: 
 
 Mercury represents planetary decrepitude. (He might have 
 included Venus.) Mars, on the other hand, represents planetary yomth. 
 Mars, unlike the earth, is almost all land. Water is scarce and its 
 whole supply comes from its polar caps <of snow. We now 
 
 know of relations so systematic and so singular, that we are sure 
 some new law underlies them. It is rather pleasant than otherwise to 
 liave this new law baffle our first attempts at discovery. The only 
 thing we are sure of is, a time is to come when each of the bodies 
 composing the solar system shall turn an unchanging fac r e in perpetu- 
 ity to the sun; when each will have reached the end of its revolution and 
 be set in the unchanging stare of death. 
 
 William J. Cowan says in the Philadelphia Journal: 
 
 Every planet has its day. Some are in the infant stage of 
 existence; some, like the earth, are prepared to receive and support life 
 and some have advanced to the stage of old age their vitality gone, 
 their beauty departed, their day of usefulness past; and they simply 
 revolve in space as a reminder to the student that all matter in a 
 material s'ense shall inevitably perish. Planets come into existence and 
 in the course of time pass out of the sphere of usefulness and others 
 take their place. 
 
 Dr. M. Wilhelm Meyer, in "The End of the World/ 7 
 published in 1905, speaking of moons falling to their 
 planets, shows how astronomers are recently discover- 
 ing the procession of planets. On page 127 he says very 
 truly: 
 
184 THE PEOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 The nearer the moon comes to the planet, the smaller 
 its orbit and the faster the velocity of its revolution. * * * 
 
 Again, on page 132 of the same work, in speaking of 
 the planets falling to the sun, he says: 
 
 The same interplay must take place between the sun and the 
 planets. One after another the planets will 'have to unite with the 
 sun. And whether a planet drops all at once, or whether it is first 
 transformed into a ring and then falls -piecemeal very gradually, the 
 rosuilt will be essentially the same; in far-off future ages the sun's 
 diminishing supply of life-giving heat will be replenished, in the one 
 case, suddenly therewith causing tire sun to flare up brightly as a new 
 star; in the other, slowly in gradual additions. 
 
 I might collect and continue these comments and 
 facts almost indefinitely; but the quotations given cer- 
 tainly make sufficient corroboration to convince any 
 common thinker. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 PKOOFS OF A PROCESSION OF SOLID MATTER 
 
 TO THE SUN. 
 
 The following reasons and facts, each and every one, 
 prove that there is a procession of solid matter, in the 
 solar system, always on its way to and falling into tho 
 sun. 
 
 The planets move. This shows that they are falling 
 in an orbit around the sun. If they were not falling 
 they could not move. 
 
 The mathematical ratio of the distance of the planets 
 from the sun, shows that they are coming gradually 
 down , gaining speed as they fall, which increases their 
 centrifugal force and checks their approach, in a regu- 
 lar ratio. 
 
 The mathematical ratio of the speed with which the 
 planets travel round the sun, shows that they are fall- 
 ing and that as they gain speed they also gain centrifu- 
 gal force, which checks their approach in a regular ratio. 
 
 The moons obey the same laws in approaching their 
 respective planets with the same mathematical pre 
 cision that the planets obey in approaching the sun, 
 both as to speed and distance, showing that it is a law 
 which governs all solid matter having an orbit in space. 
 
 The orbits of Encke's comet, Fay's comet, Saturn's 
 rings, the earth's moon and the planet Mercury, are ab- 
 
 185 
 
186 THE PROCESSION OF PLANETS 
 
 solutely known to be shortening their orbits, which is 
 proof that solid matter in the solar system is falling to 
 the sun. 
 
 The eclipses of the moon chronicled by the Chinese 
 thousands of years ago, are several days different from 
 what they should be, if the moon had then been in its 
 present orbit. 
 
 There can be no doubt in the mind of a student of the 
 procession of planets that Christmas day is the first day 
 of the year, or was originally and should be now. It is 
 the day the sun starts north, bringing springtime, har- 
 vest and glad tidings of great joy. It is the day when 
 the new year actually begins, and was the great annual 
 event of Sun worship ages ago. The reason why New 
 Year's day has overreached a week later than Christ- 
 mas day is easily understood when we realize that the 
 earth is shortening her orbit and gaining speed, say 
 only a few seconds in a year. In time this must be 
 corrected and we know that about once in every thous- 
 and years some bright astronomer like Omar Khayyam 
 corrects it; and by measuring time New Year's day 
 reaches more and more ahead. The measured year is 
 longer than the real year, because the orbit of the real 
 year is not only shorter, but the earth's speed is con- 
 tinually faster as it falls toward the sun. Since the first 
 chronicle or writing, when New Year's day was first es- 
 tablished by calendar, the earth's orbit has evidently 
 been shortened 8,920,000 miles. Christmas day never 
 changes because it is the day that the sun (apparently) 
 starts on its return trip north and must happen at a cer- 
 
THE PKOCEiSSIOX OF PLANETS 187 
 
 tain point in the earth's orbit, and not at the same time 
 as measured last year or any other year. All nature 
 feels this time; plants, insects, animals and in fact all 
 life feels the returning warmth, and nature itself seems 
 to rejoice. As long as the north pole of the earth points 
 to the north star the sun will (apparently) start north 
 at exactly the same point in the earth's orbit, altho the 
 time of an orbit in days might be only half as many. In 
 correcting the year once in many centuries, the astron- 
 omers, not realizing that the earth travels around the 
 sun in shorter orbits, have evidently placed the time of 
 New Year's day in advance, as a year measured by time 
 would place it, until it is now seven days beyond, over- 
 reaching, or coming seven days later than the true time. 
 
 The sun is not becoming colder, as it should be if not 
 fed by the continual return of falling matter. 
 
 The sunspots and great explosions on the sun, show 
 that solid matter is continually falling into it and being 
 converted into gas of tens of thousands of times greater 
 bulk, which makes greater heat and moves magnetic 
 needles at the earth as soon as the motion of light 
 reaches the earth from them. 
 
 When a celestial body travels in an elliptic orbit, it 
 gains speed as it approaches its nearest curve (peri 
 helion) and loses speed as it goes up again, or ap- 
 proaches its aphelion curve. This is more noticeable in 
 the case of comets because their orbits are more elon- 
 gated than the orbits of other celestial-bouties. 
 
 The fact that there is a measurable pressure upward 
 from the sun shows that it is expanding solid matter 
 
188 
 
 THK PKOCBSSION OF PLANETS 
 
 into gas and that the gas is thus forced up by expansion 
 and must necessarily fall to the sun again, the same as 
 expanded vapor condenses and falls to the earth, as 
 rain, snow or hail. 
 
 Fig. 48. 
 Spectrum of New Star in Perseus. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
"^ 
 
 FRANKLIN H. HEALD 
 
 Corner Amabel and Dayton Avenue 
 Los Angeles, California. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute Zero 35 
 
 Agassiz, Prof 17] 
 
 Age of Planets 45 
 
 Alpha Centuri, our nearest sun 107 
 
 Its orbit around our sun 26, 108, 109 
 
 Annular Theory 80, 81, 160 
 
 Areturus, its immense distance 107 
 
 Argol, its immense speed 109 
 
 Argol 's Analysis of the sun 114 
 
 Aristotle 135, 182 
 
 Asteroids 26, 47, 49, 62, 68, 73, 97, 134, 151 
 
 Bailey, Prof, of State Geological staff 165 
 
 Barnard, Prof., (illustration of Jupiter) 58 
 
 Baumgardt, Prof., (illustrating the checking of a planet) 71 
 
 Binary Systems 24, 110, 113, 126 
 
 Bodie 's Law 67, 150 
 
 Burnam, Prof, of Lick Observatory 110, 132 
 
 Canis, Venatici, constellation of 156 
 
 Canyon Diablo 138 
 
 Castor, the double star 109, 110 
 
 Centrifugal force 98 
 
 Ceres 67 
 
 Chamber 's Astronomy 100, 181 
 
 Chemical decomposition 22 
 
 Christmas day 187, 188, 189 
 
 Coal 154 to 159 
 
 Yucca coal 165 
 
 Conditions identical 92 
 
 Conservations of energy v . 19 
 
 Comets .' 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 152 
 
 Speed among the stars (illustration) 141 
 
 A co-met 's tail (illustration) 143 
 
 Curves of orbits 144 
 
 Copernicus (crater of the moon) 137 
 
 Cowan, William J 184 
 
 Corona (illustration) at total eclipse of the stin 99 
 
 Crust of the Earth 154 
 
 Cliff Dwellers, (illustration) Walnut Canyon, Arizona 173 
 
 Tosemite Valley (illustration) 180 
 
 193 
 
194 INDEX 
 
 Death Valley 89 
 
 Demis 65, 79 
 
 Drummond Light 39 
 
 Diameter of Venus 90 
 
 Disintegrated planet 98 
 
 Earth, the 69, 73, 81, 87, 88, 95, 151, 154, 173, 174, 176 
 
 Crust of 154 
 
 Earthquakes 168, 171 
 
 Eclipse, total of the sun (illustration) 104 
 
 Flcctric lantern (illustration) 32 
 
 Electricity 33 to 36, 52, 62 
 
 Elements of Matter 19, 20 
 
 Elliptic Orbits 95 
 
 Encke 'a Comet 147, 181, 182, 186 
 
 Eros (the nearest Asteroid) 65 66 
 
 Expanded Matter 17, 18, 24, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 105 
 
 Fay's Comet 147, 152, 181, 182, 186 
 
 First class planets 52 
 
 Fiske, Prof. John 83 
 
 Flora (an Asteroid) 68 
 
 Form and Motion 17 to 26 
 
 Foxfire 36 
 
 Friction of Light 89 
 
 Galileo 53, 54, 132 
 
 Gates, Prof. Elmer 160 
 
 Gillette and Rolf 'a Astronomy 144 
 
 Glacial Epoch 45, 56, 83 
 
 Gould, C. S. (in Eoots and Powers) 101 
 
 Graduated Atmospheres 105 
 
 Grand Canyon of the Colorado 138 
 
 (illustration) 82 
 
 Gravity 17, 20, 21 
 
 Specific gravity 39 
 
 Haeckel, Prof. Ernst 178 
 
 Heating and Cooling 17 
 
 Heald Coalfields 163, 165 
 
 Heald, Franklin H. (illustration) 191 
 
 Hebe 68 
 
 Height of 'mountains (on Venus) 92 
 
 Heintz, Charles (Common Sense Theory of the Universe) 143 
 
 Heinzeil, Prof Oscar P 166, 167 
 
 Hergchel, Sir John ,42, 174 
 
 Human Life (or intelligent life possible) 89 
 
 Inner Asteroids 97, 114 
 
 Intelligent Life (impossible on Mars) 89 
 
 Jason, Prof, (illustration) 115 
 
 Juno . 67 
 
INDEX 195 
 
 Jupiter, the planet 47, 57, 61, 62, 64, 69, 94, 111, 130, 132, 133, 151 
 
 Jr.piter's Belts* Illustration) f>$ 
 
 The Great Keel Spot 61 
 
 Moons of Jupiter (illustration) 132 
 
 Tho moons of Jupiter (table ghovnng distance and speed) ..133 
 
 Keller, Dr .' 53, 56 
 
 Kepler 78 
 
 La Place, Prof , 179 
 
 Larkin, Dr. Edward L 77, 182 
 
 Last Moon of Venus 90, 91 
 
 Lebudue, Prof. Peter 73, 124 
 
 Levornor, L. (observation discovering Vulcan) 97 
 
 Lick Observatory 110 
 
 Lick Observatory (illustration) 18 
 
 Light, Heat and Electricity 32, 37 
 
 Motion of Lright 33 
 
 Spectroscopie (photographs of) 36 
 
 Spectrum of (illustration) 37 
 
 Heat of 35 
 
 Light Signals (illustration) 77 
 
 Liquid Air 38 
 
 Loekyear's Elements of Astronomy 24, 92, 137 
 
 Lowell, Prof, (of Flagstaff, Ariz.) 184 
 
 Lowell's Picture of Mars (illustration) 70 
 
 Lyrae, a double-double star 110 
 
 Magnetic 
 
 Magnetic Observatories 101 
 
 Magnetic Poles 94 
 
 Mars, planet of 44, 45, 49, 64, 68 to 79, 83, 89, 134, 151, 184 
 
 Markings of (illustration) 70 
 
 Canals of 71, 83 
 
 Signaling to (illustration) 77 
 
 Mathematical Proof of a Procession 150 
 
 Maxwell, Clerk 53 
 
 Mercury, planet of 
 
 30, 41, 64, 84, 92, 93, 95, 96, 112, 147, 149, 150, 153, 184, 186 
 
 Meyer, Dr. Wilhelm E 118, 119, 139, 184, 185 
 
 Milky Way 24, 99, 113, 164, 183 
 
 A view of (illustration) 113 
 
 Suns in (illustration) 183 
 
 Mineral Belts 71 
 
 Mizar (a double star) 110 
 
 Mt. Lowe Observatory and railroad (illustration) 21 
 
 Mystery of the Magnet 94 
 
 Motion of expanded matter 23, 26 
 
 Moons 74, 90, 91, 95, 131, 136, 186 
 
 (illustration) 91 
 
 (illustration) showing pits where Asteroids have fallen 131 
 
196 INDEX 
 
 Table of number .130 
 
 (illustration) showing Asteroid in center of ring mountain- 
 craters 131 
 
 Nebulae 24, 25, 106, 127, 145, 153, 156, 158, 168 
 
 Resolved into suns with large telescope (illustration) 106 
 
 Cannot 'be resolved into suns with large telescope (illus.) . . . .127 
 
 Nucleus of a new world (illustration) 145 
 
 Spiral nebulae in Canis Venatici (illustration) 156 
 
 Great nebulae in Virgo (illustration) 158 
 
 Great spiral nebulae (illustration) 168 
 
 Nebular theory wrong 29, 30, 73, 134 
 
 (Illustration) showing speed according to nebular theory. ... 29 
 
 Neptune 26, 28, 29, 39, 41, 49, 62, 84, 107, 128, 139, 149, 151, 152 
 
 New Planets 25, 26 
 
 New Star in Perseus 74, 75, 111, 112, 189 
 
 Spectrum of (illustration) 189 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac 20, 84, 152 
 
 Ocean Currents 21 
 
 Omar Khayyam 179, 187 
 
 Opposite Forces 19 
 
 Orion, constellation of .145 
 
 (Illustration) The great nebulae in 145 
 
 Pallas 67 
 
 Pasadena, from Mt. Lowe (illustration) 21 
 
 Peabody 's Elements of Astronomy 181 
 
 Pelee, Mt., eruption of (illustration) 167 
 
 Piazzi 67 
 
 Pleiades, constellation of 98 
 
 Plotts, Wm 55, 56, 139, 162 
 
 Popular Fallacies, for sensational publication 92 
 
 Position and speed of planets 151 
 
 Procter, Prof, on terrestrial magetism 171 
 
 Port Los Angeles (illustration) showing rising coast 147 
 
 Radius Vector (illustration) 86 
 
 Rain, Snow and Hail 20, 21 
 
 Ring Mountains' 74 
 
 (illustration) 136 
 
 Rings of Saturn 30, 74 
 
 (illustration) 51 
 
 Rodger 's Theory of the Universe 117 
 
 Saturn, planet of 
 
 47, 50, 51, 56, 59, 61, 78, 92, 130, 135, 139, 147, 157, 186 
 
 (illustration) 51 
 
 See, Dr., in Stars and Telescopes 179, 180 
 
 Siemens & Wheatstone machine 52 
 
 Sinking Coasts 147, 155 
 
 (illustration) at Santa Monica, California 147 
 
 Solid Matter 39 
 
INDEX 197 
 
 Spectroscope 36, 42, 46 
 
 (illustration) instruments of 33 
 
 (illustration) spectroscopic instrument in Mt. Lowe Ob 42 
 
 Sun, the 104, 106, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 122, 123 
 
 (illustration) showing explosions on 104 
 
 (illustration) nebula/e dissolved into suns 106 
 
 ' illustration) showing constant explosions and flame 108 
 
 (illustration) a glowing, burning mass 110 
 
 (illustration) showing disc and one spot 115 
 
 (illustration) showing six daily photographs of spot 118 
 
 (illustration) showing speed of gas up 123 
 
 (illustration) Hale's snapshot of solar prominences 120 
 
 Stars and Telescopes, by Dr. See 179, 180 
 
 Telescope (illustration) the eyepiece 125 
 
 Titus, Prof 66 
 
 Thompson, Sir Wm 44, 128 
 
 Todd, David P 179, 180 
 
 Tyndall, Prof. John 174, 178 
 
 Uranus, the planet of 29, 41, 49, 62, 128, 130, 151, 152 
 
 Ursa Major, the constellation of 110 
 
 Vail, Prof. Isaac N 80, 81, 160 
 
 Venus, planet of 64, 74, 88 to 92, 120, 151, 184 
 
 Vesta 67 
 
 Virgo, constellation of 24 
 
 Voltaire, prophecy of 78 
 
 Vulcan, a supposed planet 97 
 
 Will-o '-the-Wisp 36 
 
 Whewell, Prof. Bridgewater Treatise 135 
 
 Young, Hon. Austin 
 
 Young, Prof 102, 116, 169 
 
 Zodiacal Light, disintegrated planets, etc 98, 100, 177 
 
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