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A very slender ring, taking off just the equatorial surface, will be hoop-shaped; while a tolerably massive ring, trenching appreciably on the diameter of the spheroid, will be quoit-shaped.
That is to say, according to the oblateness of a rotating spheroid, the detached ring may be either a hoop-shaped ring or a quoit-shaped ring. One further implication must be noted. In a much-flattened or lens-shaped spheroid, the form of the ring will vary with its bulk.
Here, however, in the case of Saturn's ring, was a quoit-shaped body travelling around the sun in continual attendance upon Saturn, whose motions, no matter how they varied in velocity or direction, were so closely followed by this strange attendant that the planet remained always centrally poised within the span of its ring-girdle.
In the case of Jupiter, again, whose mass is three and a half times that of Saturn, and whose orbit is little more than half the size, the genetic ring must, for the like reasons, have been still broader decidedly quoit-shaped, we may say; and there hence resulted a planet whose plane of rotation differs from that of his orbit by scarcely more than three degrees.
While, if the nebulous ring is decidedly quoit-shaped, and therefore aggregates into a mass whose greatest dimension lies in the plane of the orbit, both tendencies will conspire to produce rotation in that plane. On referring to the facts, we find them, as far as can be judged, in harmony with this view.
They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some were sitting up the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the kangha and the chakar, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring, which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry.
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