368 Notices of Scientific Works. [July, 



ours is the only habitable world, and that the rest are but shining 

 lights placed in the heavens to give us light by night. 



If we thought that many of our readers continued to hold this 

 doctrine, we should indeed lay down our pen in despair, and descend 

 to themes which come within the scope of the utilitarian under- 

 standing ; but thanks to the rapidly advancing strides of science, we 

 may fairly assume that a large proportion of the readers who con- 

 sult these pages are quite prepared, to consider with the author of 

 the work before us, not whether other worlds are the seats of or- 

 ganized existence, but whether we have any, and, if any, what kind of 

 evidence concerning the nature of the living forms which now inhabit, 

 or are destined in future to reside upon, the other celestial spheres. 



In considering the question from this point of view, we are 

 compelled still to admit our profound ignorance ; but we may do so 

 without shame or humiliation, for in this case it is no longer the 

 unreasoning ignorance of the lower animals — we are no longer ant- 

 philosophers — it is the darkness which precedes light; the gloom 

 that is being dispelled, slowly but surely, by the efforts of philo- 

 sophical research, through that quality of the human mind which 

 distinguishes us from inferior intelligences. We know very little 

 indeed of the conditions of existence in spheres other than our own, 

 and although Mr. Proctor has managed to write a book of more 

 than 300 pages on the subject (a great portion of which, however, 

 deals with matters interesting enough in themselves, but completely 

 alien to the main inquiry), all that has been ascertained with any- 

 thing approaching to certainty as bearing upon the habitabihty of 

 the heavenly bodies, might easily be compressed into a dozen sen- 

 tences. So that if we were strictly to obey the injunction which is 

 given to young lawyers, that before they begin to consider the law 

 in any particular case upon which they are consulted, they should 

 thoroughly master the facts ; ifj we say, we were to apply this safe 

 method to the question, what kind of beings are living or destined 

 to live upon the heavenly spheres, the consideration of the subject 

 might be long deferred, and we should have to pronounce upon it 

 with great doubt and hesitancy. 



Around Mercury there is probably some kind of atmosphere, 

 but the planet is too near the sun to admit of a satisfactory exami- 

 nation with our present philosophical instruments. Yenus almost 

 certainly possesses an atmosphere, and the inclination of her axis 

 leads us to infer the existence of seasons. 



Mars is the great piece de resistance in this light intellectual 

 banquet. That planet has almost certainly an atmosphere heavily 

 laden with clouds, two poles similar to our own, capped with snow 

 which encroaches upon and recedes from its more temperate zones 

 according to the seasons of the Martial year of 687 days; those 

 seasons being, like our own, the consequence of an inclination in 



