]36 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



is undoubtedly disappointing. But the impression is further deepened by the 

 reflection that on our own congenial planet life is hemmed in between the ter- 

 restrial surface and the upper limit of a film of atmosphere not thicker than the 

 mean depth of the film of ocean which enwraps the solid globe. The entire 

 human family swarms within a sheet of atmosphere not over three miles thick. 

 Above, are the rigors of unendurable cold and the horrors of unsupported respira- 

 tion. Below, are the impenetrable rocks or the submerging waves or the inter- 

 nal fires. Even the space about us and nearest to us is, for the greater part, 

 inaccessible to man, and unvisited by any organic being. We need not wonder 

 that corporeal existence is a rarity through all the realm of our system. 



But there are other suns and other planetary systems, and other worlds 

 which possess the conditions of habitability. When we look on the hosts of stars, 

 and consider that if only one habitable planet wanders about each sun, we under- 

 stand that the number of habitable worlds is countless. In this view, space 

 seems to be densely populated. We have neighbors ; they live beyond impassa- 

 ble barriers, but they gaze on the same galaxy, and we know they are endowed 

 with certain faculties which establish a community between them and us. How- 

 ever conformed bodily, whatever their modes and means of organic activity, we 

 know that they reason as we reason, and interpret the universe on the same 

 principles of logic and mathematics as ourselves. The orbits which their plane- 

 tary homes describe are ellipses; they have studied the same celestial geometry 

 as ourselves; they have written their treatises on celestial mechanics; they have 

 felt the impact of the luminous wave of ether; they have speculated on the nature 

 of matter and energy; they have interpreted the order of thecosmical mechanism 

 as the expression of thought and purpose ; they have placed themselves in com- 

 munion with the Supreme Thinker, who is so near to all of us that his voice is 

 audible alike to the ear of reason in all the worlds. — World Life. 



ARCH./EOLOGY, 



NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CURIOSITIES OF THE GILA COUNTRY, 



NEW MEXICO. 



Mr. G. M. Shaw, of this city, has just returned from a month's trip to the 

 Gila River country in the southwestern portion of Socorro County, where he went 

 with Messrs. Brown and Bergen to survey and report on the recent alum discov- 

 eries there, which have been located by a company of Socorro citizens. 



Mr. Shaw reports almost a solid mountain of alum over a mile square, some 

 of the cliffs of which rise to an elevation of 700 feet above the river bed. Most 

 of the alum is in an impure state and tasting very strongly of sulphuric acid, but 

 of which there seems to be an inexhaustible quantity. Some of the cliffs, how- 



