COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



things must have existed, in miniature, upon 

 our own planet, in that primitive age when its 

 oceans were in large part held suspended in the 

 dense seething atmosphere, and when the in- 

 tense volcanic fires within kept the surface in 

 ceaseless agitation. In Saturn similar pheno- 

 mena are witnessed. The appearance called the 

 " square-shouldered figure " of Saturn, first ob- 

 served by Sir William Herschel in 1805, has 

 suggested the conclusion that the giant bulk 

 of the planet " is subject to throes of so tre- 

 mendous a nature as to upheave whole zones 

 of his surface five or six hundred miles above 

 their ordinary level." Whether this be really 

 the case, — or whether, as Mr. Proctor more 

 plausibly suggests, the prominences which give 

 the square-shouldered aspect are due to the 

 shoving up of immense masses of cloud far 

 above the mean layer of Saturn's cloud-envel- 

 ope, — we must equally recognize the presence 

 of intense heat and furious volcanic action in the 

 interior of that planet. When we add that re- 

 cent calculations have made it almost certain that 

 both Jupiter and Saturn are to some extent self- 

 luminous, it becomes probable that these great 

 planets still resemble their parent, the sun, more 

 closely than they resemble their younger and 

 smaller brethren. 



Very different is the state of things witnessed 

 upon the moon. The absence of an atmosphere 

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