378 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ft 



on the earth. The trade-winds, due to the swift rotation of 

 the planet, gather these enormous masses into belts parallel 

 with its equator. Storms and typhoons are incessantly raging 

 in this vapour-laden atmosphere; and the forces at work 

 there are so stupendous that dense cloud-belts, thousands of 

 miles in width, are often formed in a single hour. This state 

 of things is not like that which is now witnessed upon the 

 earth's surface ; it is more like the state of things observed 

 upon the sun, where tornadoes continually occur, in which 

 the earth, if it were there, would be whirled along like a leaf 

 in an equinoctial gale. A similar state of 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 intense volcanic 

 fires within kept the surface in ceaseless agitation. In Saturn 

 similar phenomena are witnessed. The appearance called the 

 " square-shouldered figure " of Saturn, first observed by Sir 

 William Herschel in 1805, has suggested the conclusion that 

 the giant bulk of the planet "is subject to throes of so 

 tremendous 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-envelope, we must equally recognize the presence of 

 intense heat and furious volcanic action in the interior of 

 that planet. When we add that recent calculations have 

 made it almost certain that both Jupiter and Saturn are to 

 \5ome 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 from the lunar surface 

 was long since proved by the fact that " when stars are 



