474 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
recover their situation after having been brought into contact with an electric 
gun-barrel placed at right angles to their length, about an inch below them. 
Close by the last supporting glass a ball was to be suspended from each wire, 
and at about a sixth or an eighth of an inch below the balls the letters of the 
alphabet were to be placed on bits of paper, or any substance light enough to 
rise to the electrified ball, and so continued that each might resume its proper 
place when dropped. With an apparatus thus constructed the conversation with 
the distant'end of the wires was carried on by depressing successively the ends 
of the wires corresponding to the letters of the words, until they made contact 
with the electric gun-barrel, when immediately the same charact-ers would rise to 
the electrified balls at the far station. Another method consisted in the substi- 
tution of bells in place of the letters; these were sounded by the electric spark 
breaking against them. According to another plan the wires could be kept con- 
stantly charged and the signals sent by discharging them. Mr. Morrison's ex- 
periments did not extend over circuits longer than forty yards, but he had every 
confidence that the range of action could be greatly lengthened if due care were 
given to the insulation of the wires. — Electrical Review. 
LIFE ON THE PLANETS. 
Prof. McFarland, of the Ohio State University, in the Sidereal Messenger, 
says : Thirty years ago the question of the habitability of the planets was widely 
and, in some instances, intemperately discussed. Several volumes were written 
pro and con, the writers mostly seeming to think that they had a direct commis- 
sion from on high to settle the question or to settle their opponents ; which 
things they proceeded then and there to do. And both sides about equally for- 
got or disregarded the facts, and with great heat argued on general principles. 
An article in the June number of the Popular Science Monthly, entitled 
"The Cost of Life, " and which was in part criticized in a late number of the 
Messenger, is a kind of renewal of the useless debate, and is clothed in logic 
equally conclusive as was that of the original controversy. The points given 
lately touching the weight of a man on Jupiter and Mars were intended as a part- 
of the proof that these planets are not habitable. To pass in review all the points 
of error would require an article of too great length for the pages of this jountal; 
so I shall confine myself pretty closely to a few of the more prominent ones. 
The same author, speaking of Mercury, says: "With a temperature of 
boiling water in the frigid zones, and red-hot iron at the equator," etc. — there- 
fore there can be no life on the planet. But there is no proof of any such tem- 
perature, and in the nature of the case there can be none. Wherefore the con- 
clusions are of no force. The error consists in virtually assuming that the climate 
of a place depends solely on its distance from the Sun — whereas this is only one 
of a hundred causes. 
It is well known that even in the Torrid Zone at an elevation of about three- 
