The Humming Bird. 63 



Schelling, and many astronomers, from Bode, Ferguson, and 

 Herschell to Lalandeand Draper, with many of their disciples 

 in more recent years. 



(3) Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanci- 

 ful, others bristling with scientific knowledge, which have 

 attempted to imagine and describe life on other globes ; but we 

 always find that the new world is but the one we ourselves 

 live in, and its inhabitants the men of our own race, presented 

 either, as with Voltaire, under a miscroscope, or with de 

 Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire. Commenting 

 on this tendency, Flammarion in his work " Sur la Pluralité 

 des Mondes Habités," says, " It seems as if to the eyes of 

 those authors who have written on this subject the earth were 

 the type of the universe, and the man of earth the type of 

 the inhabitants of heavens. It is, on the contrary, much 

 more probable that, since the nature of other planets is essen- 

 tially varied, and the surroundings and conditions of existence 

 essentially different, while the forces which preside over the 

 creation of beings and the substances which enter into their 

 mutual constitution are essentially distinct, it would follow 

 that our mode of existence cannot be regarded as in any way 

 applicable to other globes." (Page 439). 



(4) The facts of physical astronomy speaks strongly in 

 favor of the presence of life, even organized life, in other 

 planets. Thus, in four meteorites which fell, respectively, at 

 Alais, in France, the Cape of Good Hope, in Hungary, and 

 again in France, there was found on analysis, graphite, a form 

 of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic life 

 on this earth of ours. In one meteorite which fell at Argueil, 

 in the south of France, in 1857, there was found w T ater and 

 turf, the latter being always formed by decomposition of 

 vegetable substances. Flammarion show's, in addition, that 

 all the conditions of life — even as w r e know it — are present on 

 some at least of the planets, and points to the fact that these 

 conditions must be much more favourable on them than they 

 are on our earth. Thus, Venus, like Mercury, has a very 

 dense atmosphere, as also has Mars ; and the snows which 

 cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface, the 

 geographical configuration of their seas and continents, the 

 variation of seasons and climates, are all closely anologous to 

 those of our earth. 



The three conclusions which M. C. Flammarion formulates 

 as vigorous, and exact deductions from the known facts and 

 laws of science are calculated to convince the sceptical mind 



