METEORS. 185 



ceivable that the thousands of years which have elapsed 

 in this instance might become millions of years without 

 the vitality of the seeds being affected. Furthermore, 

 it is conceivable that seeds may bear strongly-marked 

 vicissitudes of cold and heat without the destruction of 

 the vital principle contained in them. Yet, when we 

 learn that the fragments of our destroyed earth would 

 be millions of years amid the cold of space (a cold far 

 below the freezing point), before they approached the 

 domain of another star even though they made for 

 the nearest star in the heavens we certainly are not 

 led to entertain a very strong conviction that they 

 would germinate in the first world they chanced to en- 

 counter there, or that they would become the means ' by 

 what we blindly call natural causes, of its becoming 

 covered with vegetation.' But we have further to con- 

 sider that if our earth were scattered into a million 

 fragments, the chances would be many millions of 

 millions to one against any one of these fragments fol- 

 lowing a course which would lead it to collision with 

 some world, after but one interstellar voyage. It is 

 altogether more probable that every one of the frag- 

 ments would visit in succession many stars, occupying 

 millions of years in flitting from one to the next, 

 sweeping so closely around some as to be melted, or 

 even vaporized, and subject during the intermediate 

 millions of years to a degree of cold of which we can 

 form no adequate conception. Is it over-daring to 

 assert that no germs would retain the vital principle 

 after such a series of voyages ? 



