tions. He has quite
recently (spring of 1903) repeated these observations. Choosing a
remarkably clear and perfectly calm atmosphere, he examined the splendid
planet several times with great attention in the field of the telescope.
The right or eastern border (reversed image) was dulled by the
atmosphere of Venus; this is the line of separation between day and
night. Beneath, at the extreme northern edge, he was attracted on each
occasion by a small white patch, a little whiter than the rest of the
surface of the planet, surrounded by a light-gray penumbra, giving the
exact effect of a polar snow, very analogous to that observed at the
poles of Mars. To the author this white spot on the boreal horn of
Venus does not appear to be due to an effect of contrast, as has
sometimes been supposed.

Now, if the globe of Venus has poles, it must turn upon itself.

Unfortunately it has proved impossible to distinguish any sign upon the
disk, indicative of the direction and speed of its rotary movement,
although these observations were made, with others, under excellent
conditions.--Three o'clock in the afternoon, brilliant sun, sky clear
blue, the planet but little removed from the meridian--at which time it
is less dazzling than in the evening.

There is merely the impression; but it is so definite as to prevent the
author from adopting the new hypothesis, in virtue of which the planet,
as it gravitates round the Sun, presents always the same hemisphere.

If this hypothesis were a reality, Venus would certainly be a very
peculiar world. Eternal day on the one side; eternal night on the other.
Maximum light and heat at the center of the hemisphere perpetually
turned to the Sun; maximum cold and center of night at the antipodes.
This icy hemisphere would possibly be uninhabitable, but the resources
of Nature are so prodigious, and the law of Life is so imperious, so
persistent, under the most disadvantageous and deplorable terrestrial
conditions, that it would be transcending our rights to declare an
impossibility of existence, even in this eternal night. The currents of
the atmosphere would no doubt suffice to set up perpetual changes of
temperature between the two hemispheres, in comparison with which our
trade-winds would be the lightest of breezes.

Yes, mystery still reigns upon this adjacent earth, and the most
powerful instruments of the observatories of the whole world have been
unable to solve it. All we know is that