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SYDNEY T. KLEIN, F.L.S., F.K.A.S., ON 



our course, we arrive at our earth, situated 95,000,000 miles 

 away from the sun. Still speeding on, a further 50.000,000 

 miles brings us to Mars, with a diameter of nearly 5,000 miles, 

 and accompanied by two miniature moons. The conditions on 

 this little globe are probably more like those of the earth than 

 on any other planet, and its day is almost the same length, 

 namely, 24 hours 39 minutes. The sight of this planet in a 

 good instrument is most interesting. Oceans and continents are 

 plainly visible, and the telescope shows large tracts of snow, 

 though not necessarily water snow, surrounding its polar regions, 

 which increase considerably during the winter, and decrease 

 during the summer seasons on that planet. 



The distances we now have to travel become so great that I 

 shall not attempt to give them ; you can, however, form an idea 

 of the tremendous spaces we are traversing when you consider 

 that each successive planet is nearly double as far from the sun 

 as the preceding one. 



In the place where we should expect to have found the next 

 world we find a group of small planets ranging in size from about 

 200 miles in diameter down to only a few hundred yards. They 

 pass through nearly the same point once in each of their periods 

 of revolution, and it has been suggested that they are fragments 

 ■of a great globe rent asunder by some mighty catastrophe ; about 

 400 have been discovered and named. 



We now continue our voyage over the next huge space and 

 arrive at Jupiter, the largest and most magnificent of the 

 planets. This world is more than 1,000 times larger than our 

 earth, its circumference being actually greater than the 

 distance from the earth to the moon. It has five moons, and 

 its year is about twelve times as long as ours. Pursuing our 

 journey, we next come to Saturn. It is nearly as large as 

 Jupiter, and has a huge ring of planetary matter revolving 

 round it in addition to eight moons. Eurther and further we 

 go and the planets behind us are disappearing, and even the 

 sun is dwindling dowm to a mere speck ; still we hurry on, and 

 at last alight on another planet, Uranus, about 60 times larger 

 than our earth. We see moons in attendance, but they have 

 .scarcely any light to reflect. The sun is only a star now ; but 

 we must hasten on deeper and deeper into space. We shall 

 again, as formerly, have to go as far beyond the last planet as 

 that planet is from the sun. The mind cannot grasp these 

 huge distances. Still we travel on to the last planet, Neptune, 

 revolving on its lonely orbit sunk so deep into space that 

 though it rushes round the sun at the rate of 22,000 miles per 



