A GIANT PLANET. 2 g\ 



But we are thus led to consider a circumstance which, as it ap- 

 pears to us, disposes finally of the idea that in the cloud-rings of Jupi- 

 ter we have to deal with phenomena resembling those presented by our 

 own earth. 



"We are too apt, in studying the celestial objects, to forget that 

 where all seems at nearly perfect rest, there may be processes of the 

 utmost activity nay, rather, of the utmost violence taking place as 

 it were under our very eyes, and yet not perceptible save to the eye 

 of reason. Looking at Jupiter, under his ordinary aspect, even in the 

 finest telescope, one would feel certain that a general calm prevailed 

 over his mighty globe. The steadfast equatorial ring, and the straight 

 and sharply-defined bands over either hemisphere, suggest certainly no 

 idea of violent action. And when some feature in a belt is seen to 

 change slowly in figure or, rather, when at the end of a certain time 

 it is found to have so changed, for no eye can follow such changes as 

 they proceed we are not prepared to recognize in the process the evi- 

 dence of disturbances compared with which the fiercest hurricanes that 

 have ever raged on earth are as mere summer zephyrs. 



Indeed, the planet Jupiter has been selected even by astronomers 

 of repute as an abode of pleasantness, a sort of paradise among the 

 planet-worlds. There exists, we are told, in that distant world, a per- 

 ennial spring " a striking display of the beneficence of the Creator," 

 says Admiral Smyth ; " for the Jovian year contains twelve mundane 

 years ; and, if there were a proportionate length of winter, that cold 

 season would be three of the earthly years in length and tend to the 

 destruction of vegetable life." 



Even those who have denied that Jupiter can be the abode of life, 

 and have formed altogether unfavorable ideas of his condition, have 

 pictured him nevertheless as the scene of continual calm, though the 

 calm is, according to their view, the calm of gloom and desolation. 

 They recognize in Jupiter an eternal winter rather than a perpetual 

 spring. Whewell, for example, in that once famous work the " Plu- 

 rality of Worlds," maintained that, if living creatures exist at all in 

 Jupiter, they must be wretched gelatinous monsters, languidly floating 

 about in icy seas. According to him, Jupiter is but a great globe of 

 ice and water, with perhaps a cindery nucleus a glacial planet, with 

 no more vitality in it than an iceberg. 



But when we begin to examine the records of observers, and to 

 consider them with due reference to the vast proportions of the planet, 

 we recognize the fact that, whatever may be Jupiter's unfitness to be 

 the abode of life, it is not of an excess of stillness that his inhabitants 

 (if he have any) can justly make complaint. Setting aside the enor- 

 mous activity of which the mere existence of the belts affords evi- 

 dence, and even regarding such phenomena as the formation or a dis- 

 appearance of a new belt in two or three hours as merely indicative of 

 heavy rainfalls or of the condensation of large masses of invisible 



