LIFE IN THE INFRA-WORLD 29 



world might be crowded with events, and yet it 

 would add but an altogether inappreciable fraction 

 to our earthly span of life. The facts of embryology 

 are far from being accounted for, and the phenomena 

 of ontogenetic development are so obscure that a 

 reasonable hypothesis like the above can only tend 

 towards their elucidation. It certainly removes the 

 difficulty experienced in conceiving the boundless 

 possibilities of life as being contained in an in visibly 

 small germ. 



Considerations such as these lend a human in- 

 terest to an inquiry undertaken in the first instance 

 for a purely physical purpose. 



4. Conditions of Life. How much can be done in 

 the way of calculating conditions of existence from 

 simple mechanical data is shown by Prof. Lowell's 

 well-known calculation of the probable size and 

 strength of the inhabitants of Mars. In doing the 

 same for the infra- world, we can point to no such 

 convincing evidence of life as the canals of Mars. 

 Nor is that necessary for our purpose. We cannot 

 prove that life in our sense exists in the infra- world ; 

 but we can point to its possibility, and infer its 

 probability. 



have already seen that we can postulate an 

 atomic structure of the " infra-world " on the plan 

 of our own without sensibly interfering with tin- 

 practical indivisibility <>f the atoms constituting our 

 own world. Cohesion is 10" times stronger than 



