NEWS FROM JUPITER. 433 



the special materials required for it, new materials, whose dissociation 

 point had a lower temperature, and which had consequently been pre- 

 vented from combining previously, would commence upon a similar 

 process of combustion. And so we may suppose combination to follow 

 combination, until, finally, perhaps at a time when the planets, freighted 

 with their living inhabitants, have begun to arrive at the sun's sur- 

 face, long after the fires of the last combustion have expired, it has 

 itself become a habitable globe, lighted and heated or served by other 

 molecular forces from distant orbs where new conditions cause new 

 chemical combinations, and conversions of newly-developed potential 

 energies. 



Finally, giving play to the imagination, may we not suppose fur- 

 ther, that, in a universe extended throughout infinite space, processes 

 of concentration similar to those supposed in the nebular hypothesis 

 and supplemented by processes like those here indicated will go on 

 forever, evolving worlds of continually-increasing magnificence, per- 

 haps inhabited by living occupants of inconceivably transcendent and 

 ever-expanding faculties ? 



♦»» 



NEWS FROM JUPITER. 



By EICHAED A. PEOCTOE, B. A. 



THE planet Jupiter has passed during the last year through a singu- 

 lar process of change. The planet has not, indeed, assumed a 

 new appearance, but has gradually resumed its normal aspect after 

 three or four years, during which the mid zone of Jupiter has been 

 aglow with a peculiar ruddy light. The zone is now of a creamy- 

 white color, its ordinary hue. We have, in fact, reached the close of 

 a period of disturbance, and have received a definite answer to ques- 

 tions which had arisen as to the reality of the change described by 

 observers. Many astronomers of repute were disposed to believe that 

 the peculiarities recently observed were merely due to the instruments 

 with which the planet has been observed — not, indeed, to any fault in 

 those instruments, but, in fact, to their good qualities in showing 

 color. A considerable number of the earlier accounts of Jupiter's 

 change of aspect came from observers who used the comparatively 

 modern form of telescope known as the silvered-glass reflectors, and it 

 is well known that these instruments are particularly well suited for 

 the study of color-changes. Nevertheless, observations made with 

 the ordinary refracting, telescope were not wanting ; and it had begun 

 to be recognized that Jupiter really had altered remarkably in appear- 

 ance, even before that gradual process of change which, by restoring 

 his usual aspect, enabled every telescopist to assure himself that there 

 had been no illusion in the earlier observations. 

 vol. iv.— 28 



