METEORS. 157 



all the conditions of life in Mars, all that tends to the 

 comfort and well-being of Martian creatures, must 

 differ so remarkably from what is known on earth, that 

 to reasoning beings on Mars the idea of life on our earth 

 must appear wild and fanciful in the extreme, if not 

 altogether untenable. 



(From the Comhill Magazine for July 1873.) 



METEORS SEEDBEARING AND OTHERWISE. 



ASTRONOMERS are but now beginning to recognise the 

 full significance of those strange discoveries which have 

 been made respecting meteors during this last four or 

 five years. The aspect of meteoric astronomy has been 

 completely changed by the labours of Adams, Leverrier, 

 Schiaparelli, and a host of other inquirers; while a 

 variety of interesting conclusions which are deducible 

 from the recent discoveries remain as yet unnoticed, 

 simply because so much has to be done in setting the 

 new facts into order. Startling as was the suggestion 

 recently thrown out by Sir W. Thomson that meteors 

 in long-past ages brought to our earth the seeds of life 

 from worlds that had been shattered into fragments 

 I believe that even more surprising inferences will be 

 legitimately deduced from what has been learned of 

 late respecting meteors. Time only is needed, that, in 

 the first placa, the actual condition of the solar system, 

 as respects these bodies, may be more satisfactorily 

 determined ; and that, in the second place, the former 



