22 THE BODIES OF SPACE, but it is reasonable to suppose that, among the many, some are older than ours. There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability of the com parative youth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions and the geognostic appearances of the surface of our planet. This consists in a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to nearly the orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape. This matter, which sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in the form of a cone projecting upwards in the line of the sun’s path, and which bears the name of the Zodiacal Light, has been thought a residuum or last rem nant of the concentrating matter of our system, and thus may be supposed to indicate the compa rative recentness of the principal events of our cosmogony. Supposing the surmise and inference to be correct, and they may be held as so far sup ported by more familiar evidence, we might with the more confidence speak of our system as not amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whose various phenomena, physical and moral, as yet lay undeveloped, while myriads of others were fully fashioned, and in complete arrangement. Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are directing our inquiries, w r e first find ourselves called upon
