SATUHX. 19 



at the rate of nearly 200,000 miles a second or 12,000,000 

 a minute, takes about an hour and a quarter to pass 

 from the sun to Saturn. It performs its journey round 

 the sun only in 29^ years, which are therefore but as 

 one year, yet all this time it is moving at the rate of 

 nearly 22,000 miles an hour, so immense is the orbit 

 it has to traverse, but it revolves on its axis in about 

 10^ hours, so that the nights and days are extremely 

 short while the years are prodigiously long. There is 

 every reason to believe that it has changes of seasons and 

 variation of climate similar to those in our world, but, being 

 so far from the sun, they must be altogether more severe than 

 ours. The most extraordinary part of this great globe is 

 its possession of three (perhaps more) great flattened rings, 

 which surround it, one within the other ; these rings are of 

 immense size and width, but very thin, the great breadth 

 through all from the inner to the outer edges being about 

 30,000 miles, while their thickness cannot exceed 250. 

 These rings are placed at a right angle to the planet's axis 

 of rotation and revolve with it, so that when the planet is 

 at the equinox, the edge of these rings is turned towards the 

 sun, they can then be seen only by the most powerful 

 telescopes, forming a faint streak on each side of the orb 

 of the planet (fig. 19), but as they become inclined they 



FIG. 19. 



appear as a very long ellipse, the ends of which project in 

 loop-like forms on either side, giving rise to the notion of 

 the planet having two handles (fig. 20) . This ellipse becomes 

 broader and broader as the plane of the rings forms a 



c 2 



