110 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



destroyed by excessive heat. On the other hand, there 

 are doubtless skeptics on Yenus also who smile at the 

 vanity of those who can conceive a frozen world, such 

 as this our outer planet, to be inhabited by any sort 

 of living creature. But we doubt not that the more 

 advanced thinkers both in Mars and Yenus are ready 

 to admit that, though we must necessarily be far infe- 

 rior beings to themselves, we yet manage to " live and 

 move and have our being " on this ill-conditioned globe 

 of ours. And these, observing the earth's polar snow- 

 caps, must be led to several important conclusions 

 respecting physical relations here. 



It is, indeed, rather a singular fact to contemplate, 

 that ex-terrestrial observers, such as these, may know 

 much more than we ourselves do respecting those mys- 

 terious regions which lie close around the two poles. 

 Their eyes may have rested on spots which with all our 

 endeavors we have hitherto failed to reach. Whether, 

 as some have thought, the arctic pole is in summer 

 surrounded by a wide and tide-swayed ocean ; whether 

 there lies around the antarctic pole a wide continent 

 bespread with volcanic mountains larger and more 

 energetic than the two burning cones which Ross found 

 on the outskirts of this desolate region ; or whether the 

 habitudes prevailing near either pole are wholly differ- 

 ent from those suggested by geographers and voyagers 

 such questions as these might possibly be resolved 

 at once, could our astronomers take their stand on 



