270 INHABITED WORLDS. 



tliiit ill no case is it probable any particnlar plant 

 or animal would reappear identically in any two 

 distinct planets. For consider how immensely, 

 even in our own world, the plants and animals 

 differ in different countries. In Europe we have 

 all elms and ashes, dogs and horses, weasels and 

 foxes, sparrows and jackdaws. In Asia, on the 

 other hand, they liave palms and baobabs, ele- 

 phants and camels, jackais and rhinoceroses, par- 

 rots and sunbirds. Still more strikingly different 

 are the products of the sea from those of the land 

 — the wrack and the sea-weed, the fish and the lob- 

 sters, the whales and the seals — from the plants 

 and animals of the dry earth. And, if within the 

 Hunts of our own })lanet we iind such an extraor- 

 dinary diversity and wealth of variety, how can 

 we expect with any show of reason that in the 

 widely unlike circumstances of a totally different 

 world any single form such as we here know it 

 would be separately produced in exact fac-simile ? 

 "Surely," it may be objected, "even if there be 

 no men in the other planets during their period of 

 life, if such they have, there must at least be 

 rational creatures ! It is hardly to be supposed 

 that whole worlds would be wasted, aa it were, 

 upon lower forms of life alone, and that planets 

 immensely vaster than our own would be thrown 

 away upon mere unreasoning creatures." Perhaps 

 not — we cannot say ; thus much alone we know 



