Other Worlds | Page 3

serious question as to its
habitability--Singularity of the moon's motions--Appearance of its
surface to the naked eye and with the telescope--The "seas" and the
wonderful mountains and craters--A terrible abyss described--Tycho's
mysterious rays--Difference between lunar and terrestrial
volcanoes--Mountain-ringed valleys--Gigantic cracks in the lunar
globe--Slight force of gravity of the moon and some interesting
deductions--The moon a world of giantism--What kind of atmospheric
gases can the moon contain--The question of water and of former
oceans--The great volcanic 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,