Other Worlds | Page 3

cataclysm in the moon's history--Evidence of volcanic and other changes now occurring--Is there vegetation on the moon?--Lunar day and night--The earth as seen from the moon--Discoveries yet to be made
CHAPTER IX
HOW TO FIND THE PLANETS 256
It is easy to make acquaintance with the planets and to follow them among the stars--The first step a knowledge of the constellations--How this is to be acquired--How to use the Nautical Almanac in connection with the charts in this book--The visibility of Mercury and Venus--The oppositions of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn
INDEX 277

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE Chart of Mars Frontispiece
Diagram showing causes of day and night on portions of Mercury 35
Regions of day and night on Mercury 38
Venus's atmosphere seen as a ring of light 56
View of Jupiter facing 168
Three views of Saturn facing 186
Diagram showing the moon's path through space 217
The lunar Alps, Apennines, and Caucasus facing 222
The moon at first and last quarter facing 226
Phases and rotation of the moon 250
Charts showing the zodiacal constellations: 1. From right ascension 0 hours to 4 hours 259 2. " " 4 " " 8 " 261 3. " " 8 " " 2 " 263 4. " " 12 " " 16 " 265 5. " " 16 " " 20 " 267 6. " " 20 " " 24 " 269

OTHER WORLDS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Other worlds and their inhabitants are remarkably popular subjects of speculation at the present time. Every day we hear people asking one another if it is true that we shall soon be able to communicate with some of the far-off globes, such as Mars, that circle in company with our earth about the sun. One of the masters of practical electrical science in our time has suggested that the principle of wireless telegraphy may be extended to the transmission of messages across space from planet to planet. The existence of intelligent inhabitants in some of the other planets has become, with many, a matter of conviction, and for everybody it presents a question of fascinating interest, which has deeply stirred the popular imagination.
The importance of this subject as an intellectual phenomenon of the opening century is clearly indicated by the extent to which it has entered into recent literature. Poets feel its inspiration, and novelists and romancers freely select other planets as the scenes of their stories. One tells us of a visit paid by men to the moon, and of the wonderful things seen, and adventures had, there. Lucian, it is true, did the same thing eighteen hundred years ago, but he had not the aid of hints from modern science to guide his speculations and lend verisimilitude to his narrative.
Another startles us from our sense of planetary security with a realistic account of the invasion of the earth by the terrible sons of warlike Mars, seeking to extend their empire by the conquest of foreign globes.
Sometimes it is a trip from world to world, a kind of celestial pleasure yachting, with depictions of creatures more wonderful than--
"The anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders"--
that is presented to our imagination; and sometimes we are informed of the visions beheld by the temporarily disembodied spirits of trance mediums, or other modern thaumaturgists, flitting about among the planets.
Then, to vary the theme, we find charming inhabitants of other worlds represented as coming down to the earth and sojourning for a time on our dull planet, to the delight of susceptible successors of father Adam, who become, henceforth, ready to follow their captivating visitors to the ends of the universe.
In short, writers of fiction have already established interplanetary communication to their entire satisfaction, thus vastly and indefinitely enlarging the bounds of romance, and making us so familiar with the peculiarities of our remarkable brothers and sisters of Mars, Venus, and the moon, that we can not help feeling, notwithstanding the many divergences in the descriptions, that we should certainly recognize them on sight wherever we might meet them.
But the subject is by no means abandoned to the tellers of tales and the dreamers of dreams. Men of science, also, eagerly enter into the discussion of the possibilities of other worlds, and become warm over it.
Around Mars, in particular, a lively war of opinions rages. Not all astronomers have joined in the dispute--some have not imagination enough, and some are waiting for more light before choosing sides--but those who have entered the arena are divided between two opposed camps. One side holds that Mars is not only a world capable of having inhabitants, but that it actually has them, and that they have given visual proof of their existence and their intelligence through the changes they have produced upon its surface. The other side maintains that Mars is neither inhabited nor habitable, and that what are taken for vast public works and engineering