124 



an arm or a leg from some strong and healthy man, 

 and through you should drown it in milk and cream 

 these parts will only rot away and turn into food for 

 worms and insects. The difference between the infant 

 earth and the dead comet is the same. 



I have asserted from the outset that the celestial 

 world is not a vegetable but an animal kingdom, and 

 that our earth is an animal like other animals, but with 

 a form adapted to its environment of cosmic fluid. It is 

 little to say of it that it swims in space; it also subordi- 

 nates its movements to the reasonable principles of its 

 own peculiar sort of communal life, aiding the life of other 

 spheres, and in its turn receiving help from them as the 

 means of higher cosmic evolution. 



r ln the universe there is no isolation of spherical 

 organisms; co-operation and exchange are perpetually 

 going on, of which I shall speak as the reasonable phe- 

 nomena of the planet world, to be inferred from the 

 atmospherical phenomena around us. Amongst these 

 suggestive phenomena I number rain, barometrical de- 

 pressions, thunder, lightning and the Aurora Borealis. 



Rain is the product of the water on our earth. This 

 water, which is the chief source of hydrogen, under the 

 influence of radiant heat is continually distilled in the form 

 of steam, and penetrating and permeating the vegetable 



^kingdom carries off into cosmic space the oxygen pro- 

 duced there. One of the laws of nature decrees that all 

 bodies swell under the influence of heat. The warmer the 



.atmosphere the more dilated the vapour. But the atmos- 

 phere as we rise becomes progressively colder, and at a 

 certain height above the earth's surface the watery va- 

 pour visibly condenses into atmospheric cloud. Such 

 clouds move over the earth in various directions according 

 to the currents of the wind. Passing still higher the va- 

 pour, encountering still colder air condenses into drops 

 and falls to earth as rain. Here, however, I must stop to 

 explain the formation of the barometrical maximum and 

 minimum in the earth's atmosphere. 



