THE PLANETS, ARE THEY INHABITED I 



corresponding hours in the afternoon. Nor can this be regarded 

 as a specific effect of light upon the plants, for when the flowers 

 are introduced into a dark chamber they are found to open and 

 close their blossoms at the same times. 



18. The necessity of maintaining a correspondence between the 

 intervals of activity and repose, the taking of food, &c., and the 

 period of light and darkness, was shown in the case of voyages 

 made to the north pole, where navigators attained those latitudes 

 in which the sun never rises for several weeks, in which cases it 

 was found necessary to make the crews of the ships adhere to 

 the habit of retiring at nine o'clock and rising at a quarter before 

 six. Under these circumstances they enjoyed a state of salubrity 

 very remarkable, notwithstanding the trying severity of climate 

 to which they were exposed. 



As an example of creative beneficence the rotation of the earth 

 in twenty-four hours would lose none of its force if that par- 

 ticular period, like the time of its revolution round the sun, 

 were a necessary consequence of an established physical law. 

 It is interesting, nevertheless, to observe that such is not the 

 case. No law of matter would have prevented the earth from 

 receiving any other rate of rotation more or less rapid. It 

 might have made a single rotation a year, in which case the 

 average alternations of day and night would have been six 

 months, or it might have made a single rotation in an hour, in 

 which case the alternations would have been thirty minutes. 

 Such conditions though physically admissible, would be obviously 

 incompatible with the continuance of the organised world. We 

 are, then, to regard this period of diurnal rotation of the earth 

 and its admirable adaptation to the wants and well-being of the 

 creatures which inhabit it, not as the result of any law of 

 physics, but as a provision directly emanating from divine 

 beneficence, and as an example of the infinite k skill of the hand 

 which at the moment of its creation launched the earth into 

 space. 



19. Seeing then, that the expedient of making the globe of the 

 earth turn upon its axis in twenty-four hours is one productive 

 of such multifarious benefits, and so intimately related to the 

 organised species of our globe, that were it to turn otherwise 

 than it does, in a greater or less time, an entire derangement 

 of the animal or vegetable economy would ensue, it becomes an 

 interesting question to ascertain whether the other planets are 

 provided with a similar expedient ; and if so, to what extent 

 the application of such expedient corresponds with the case of 

 the earth. We accordingly find that all the planets without 

 exception have a motion of rotation on certain diameters as 



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