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406 in their spectra (§ 312) form another link connecting nebulae with stars.

A good many converging lines of evidence thus point to a greater variety in the arrangement, size, and structure of the bodies with which the telescope makes us acquainted than seemed probable when sidereal astronomy was first seriously studied; they also indicate the probability that these bodies should be regarded as belonging to a single system, even if it be of almost inconceivable complexity, rather than to a number of perfectly distinct systems of a simpler type.

318. Laplace's nebular hypothesis (chapter, § 250) was published a little more than a century ago (1796), and has been greatly affected by progress in various departments of astronomical knowledge. Subsequent discoveries of planets and satellites (§§ 294, 295) have marred to some extent the uniformity and symmetry of the motions of the solar system on which Laplace laid so much stress; but it is not impossible to give reasonable explanations of the backward motions of the satellites of the two most distant planets, and of the large eccentricity and inclination of the paths of some of the minor planets, while apart from these exceptions the number of bodies the motions of which have the characteristics which Laplace pointed out has been considerably increased. The case for some sort of common origin of the bodies of the solar system has perhaps in this way gained as much as it has lost. Again, the telescopic evidence which Herschel adduced (chapter, § 261) in favour of the existence of certain processes of condensation in nebulae has been strengthened by later evidence of a similar character, and by the various pieces of evidence already referred to which connect nebulae with single stars and with clusters. The differences in the spectra of stars also receive their most satisfactory explanation as representing different stages of condensation of bodies of the same general character.

319. An entirely new contribution to the problem has resulted from certain discoveries as to the nature of heat, culminating in the recognition (about 1840-50) of heat as only one form of what physicists now call energy, which manifests itself also in the motion of bodies, in the