ATMOSPHERIC FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 305 



SO very far distant all life on this planet would come to an end 

 :from carbon hunger ; after my remarks as to evidence of 

 pre-arrangement in having- life evolved along two lines 

 mutually helpful to each other, and especially after my 

 objections to Darwinism for his slaughter of the innocents, it 

 is a sort of reductio ad absurdum on my part to 

 predict such a wholesale slaughter at the end of all things. 

 There is something in this objection. It might almost be urged 

 that if my conclusions are correct, this reductio ad absurdum is 

 an argument in favour of the transformation of matter. So to 

 ward off this universal death from carbon hunger, there may be 

 suggested some new source of carbon. It is rather peculiar that 

 nitrogen is the element just above in the atmosphere. An}' atom 

 of nitrogen whidh broke up owing to the escape of some of its 

 •electrons might find its next state of stable equilibrium as carbon. 



Again, there is the possible source of fresh carbon from the 

 sun. Carbon electrons are being constantly repelled by light 

 pressure from the sun, and are as constantly bombarding the 

 earth. But I think that these suggested sources of new carbon 

 are rather fanciful. We must get out of our difficulty in some 

 other way. 



We are often told that the evolution of the individual from 

 the ovum to the end, is a short epitome of the evolution of the 

 race from the beginning ; and as every individual has to come to 

 an end ; so, by analogy, we would expect the race to come to 

 an end, too; it may be to be followed, like the indi\idual, by 

 other and higher ones. 



DARK NEBULAE.— In an article by Mr. R. T. A. Innes in 

 the Transvaal Observatory Circular, No. 5, on the region around 

 S Coronae Austrinae, the remarkable starless space in the neigh- 

 bouring sky is discussed. In Vol. 9 of the Cape Observatory 

 Annals Mr. Innes had recorded the fact that the loth magnitude 

 star Cor. D.M. -36° 13208, on the borders of the starless patch, 

 was invisible during the years 1899 — 1901. On the other hand, 

 Mr. W. M. Worssell, of the Transvaal Observatory, studying the 

 region in question, found that the star is now visible, and ranging 

 in magnitude from 11. o to 12.2. The conclusion arrvied at is that 

 the dark patch in the sky surrounding this region — and possibly 

 also similar starless patches in other parts of the sky — is due to 

 irregular sheafs of gas, that where those sheafs are thickest there 

 IS an absolute blackness in the sky, but that in the thinner portions 

 stars are capable of shining through the intervening gas, but with 

 a nebulosity somewhat like that of a street lamp in a fog. The 

 temporary obscuration of the star above mentioned is assumed to 

 be due to an extension of the obscuring medium across the line of 

 sight, and its recovered visibility to a subsequent contraction of the 

 interposed gas. Mr. Worssell found that there was a distinct 

 difference in tint of the sky when the field of view crossed the edge 

 of the dark patch. 



