orb eclipsed
in a period of 129 hours, and its eclipsing planet also revolves in the
plane of our vision. The variable star in Ophiuchus has an analogous
system, and observation has already revealed a great number of others.

Since, then, a certain number of solar systems differing from our own
have been revealed, as it were in section, to terrestrial observation,
this affords us sufficient evidence of the existence of an innumerable
quantity of solar systems scattered through the immensities of space,
and we are no longer reduced to conjecture.

On the other hand, analysis of the motions of several stars, such as
Sirius, Procyon, Altair, proves that these distant orbs have
companions,--planets not yet discovered by the telescope, and that
perhaps never will be discovered, because they are obscure, and lost in
the radiation of the star.

* * * * *

Some _savants_ have asserted that Life can not germinate if the
conditions of the environment differ too much from terrestrial
conditions.

This hypothesis is purely gratuitous, and we will now discuss it.

In order to examine what is happening on the Earth, let us mount the
ladder of time for a moment, to follow the evolutions of Nature.

There was an epoch when the Earth did not exist. Our planet, the future
world of our habitation, slept in the bosom of the solar nebula.

At last it came to birth, this cherished Earth, a gaseous, luminous
ball, poor reflection of the King of Orbs, its parent. Millions of years
rolled by before the condensation and cooling of this new globe were
sufficiently transformed to permit life to manifest itself in its most
rudimentary aspects.

The first organic forms of the protoplasm, the first aggregations of
cells, the protozoons, the zoophytes or plant-animals, the gelatinous
mussels of the still warm seas, were succeeded by the fishes, then by
the reptiles, the birds, the mammals, and lastly man, who at present
occupies the top of the genealogical tree, and crowns the animal
kingdom.

Humanity is comparatively young upon the Earth. We may attribute some
thousands of centuries of existence to it ... and some five years of
reason!

The terrestrial organisms, from the lowest up to man, are the resultant
of the forces in action at the surface of our planet. The earliest seem
to have been produced by the combinations of carbon with hydrogen and
nitrogen; they were, so to speak, without animation, save