WOKL,D DOW a tiJSHJZ. 41 



But, as Mr. Proctor has clearly shown, the rays of the 

 sun cannot do all the work thus required for his own restora- 

 tion without becoming extinguished as regards the outside 

 universe ; and if the other suns i.e., the stars do the same 

 they could not be visible to us. 



Thus Dr. Siemens' theory removes our sun from his 

 place among the stars, and renders the great problem of 

 stellar radiation more inscrutable than ever by thus putting 

 the evidence of our great luminary altogether out of court, 



My theory, on the contrary, demands only a gradual ab- 

 sorption of solar and stellar rays, such as actual observation 

 of their varying splendor indicates. 



If space were absolutely transparent, and its infinite 

 depths peopled throughout, the firmament would present to 

 our view one continuous blazing dome, as all the spaces 

 between the nearer stars would be filled by the infinity of 

 radiations from the more distant. 



ANOTHER WOKLD DOWN HEBE. 



WHAT a horrible place must this world appear when re- 

 garded according to our ideas from an insect's point of view! 

 The air infested with huge flying hungry dragons, whose 

 gaping and snapping mouths are ever intent upon swallow- 

 ing the innocent creatures for whom, according to the in- 

 sect, if he were like us, a properly constructed world ought 

 to be exclusively adapted. The solid earth continually 

 shaken by the approaching tread of hideous giants mov- 

 ing mountains that crush out precious lives at every foot- 

 step, an occasional draught of the blood of these monsters, 

 stolen at life-risk, affording but poor compensation for such 

 fatal persecution. 



Let us hope that the little victims are less like ourselves 

 than the doings of ants and bees might lead us to suppose ; 

 that their mental anxieties are not proportionate to the 

 optical vigilance indicated by the four thousand eye-lenses 

 of the common house-fly, the seventeen thousand of the 



