24. Before the planetary bodies have attained a degree of coolness sufficient for solidification, smaller bodies, veritable liquid globules, are detached from some in the equatorial plane, — a plane in which the centrifugal force is the greatest, — and which by virtue of the same laws have acquired a movement of translation around their planetary generatrix, like theirs around their central astral generator.
Thus the Earth has given birth to the moon, the body of which, being smaller, has cooled in a shorter time. Now the laws and forces which presided at its detachment from the terrestrial equator and its movement of translation in this same plane, act in such a way, that this world, in place of being invested with the spheroid form, takes that of an ovoid globe; that is to say, having the elongated form of an egg, the center of gravity in the inferior part.
