ained as due to the irregularities of figure to be
expected in cosmical _potsherds_ (so to speak), was added to the
confirmatory evidence.[209] The strong point of the theory, however, lay
not in what it explained, but in what it had predicted. It had been
twice confirmed by actual exploration of the skies, and had produced, in
the recognition of Vesta, the first recorded instance of the
_premeditated_ discovery of a heavenly body.

The view not only commended itself to the facile imagination of the
unlearned, but received the sanction of the highest scientific
authority. The great Lagrange bestowed upon it his analytical
_imprimatur_, showing that the explosive forces required to produce the
supposed catastrophe came well within the bounds of possibility; since a
velocity of less than twenty times that of a cannon-ball leaving the
gun's mouth would have sufficed, according to his calculation, to launch
the asteroidal fragments on their respective paths. Indeed, he was
disposed to regard the hypothesis of disruption as more generally
available than its author had designed it to be, and proposed to
supplement with it, as explanatory of the eccentric orbits of comets,
the nebular theory of Laplace, thereby obtaining, as he said, "a
complete view of the origin of the planetary system more conformable to
Nature and mechanical laws than any yet proposed."[210]

Nevertheless the hypothesis of Olbers has not held its ground. It seemed
as if all the evidence available for its support had been produced at
once and spontaneously, while the unfavourable items were elicited
slowly, and, as it were, by cross-examination. A more extended
acquaintance with the group of bodies whose peculiarities it was framed
to explain has shown them, after all, as recalcitrant to any such
explanation. Coincidences at the first view significant and striking
have been swamped by contrary examples; and a hasty general conclusion
has, by a not uncommon destiny, at last perished under the accumulation
of particulars. Moreover, as has been remarked by Professor
Newcomb,[211] mutual perturbations would rapidly efface all traces of a
common disruptive origin, and the catastrophe, to be perceptible in its
effects, should have been comparatively recent.

A new generation of astronomers had arisen before any additions were
made to the little family of the minor planets. Piazzi died in 1826,
Harding in 1834, Olbers in 1840; all those who had prepared or
part