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to pass through narrow and difficult places in flight or 

 in pursuit. Were they not defended by their scales they 

 would be subject to perpetual wounds. The scales act as 

 armour to protect from blows, but they themselves might 

 easily be torn away, leaving the body naked, but for the 

 special mucilage which cures the injured parts and renews 

 the damaged scales. 



Besides preserving the earth's form however the azote 

 defends the earth from cosmic matter. It is computed by 

 scientists that not less than 5000,000 aerolites and other 

 such cosmic fragments, bearing the name of shooting 

 stars fall every year upon our earth. These elements 

 only become visible to us when they enter our atmos- 

 phere, from one hundred to a hundred and fifty versts 

 above the earth's surface. Cases have been known of 

 such bodies which seemed on their first appearance as 

 large as the moon, and an object which at a distance of 

 a hundred versts appears as large as the moon must 

 weigh at least millions of poods. Such a mass crashing 

 upon the earth at full speed would produce terrific re- 

 sults. Certainly if for entire versts this mass was break- 

 ing into pieces, and every year five million visitors of 

 this sort big or little entered our air; the earth would be 

 no place to live in. But nature foreseeing this provided 

 in azote a shield. As soon as the aerolite flies into our 

 atmosphere it encounters the stream of solar gas flying 

 upward, the friction against which engenders enormous 

 heat, a long line is described by the burning meteor and 

 the hydrogen which is freed from the combusted oxygen 

 tears its opponent into fragments and the aerolite explo- 

 des and falls to earth in cosmic dust, swelling the body 

 of the earth. The function of azote in this case is very 

 clear; it acts as a buffer against the cosmic ruins floating 

 along upon the cosmic tide. 



Examining all these conditions of cosmic life we see 

 everywhere the signs of reason, deepest and clearest wis- 

 dom, in all the atmospherical and celestial phenomena of 

 stars, and cannot but be astonished at the limited one- 



