A new English astronomer, Mr. R. Proctor, of St. John's
College, Cambridge, who has just published an elaborate book on the planet Saturn, believes Saturn's rings to be not continuous bodies, either solid or fluid, but a multitude of loose planets, grouped like a bead necklace round his equatorial regions, just as if we were
furnished not with one moon, but as many moons as -would span the whole earth. Mr. Proctor asserts that this hypothesis explains more completely the whole phenomena of the case than any other. This supposition somehow gives a larger idea of the opulence of the universe in worlds than any other known fact. To have such a multitude of little worlds strung close together round one planet produces (illogically enough) a more vivid impression on the mind, than many times the same number of fixed stars distributed over the infinitude of space.
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