anting them to Mars,
though I had more hope of acclimatising seedlings raised from the seed
I carried with me than plants which had actually begun their life on
the surface of the Earth. The failure I ascribed naturally to the
known connection between the action of gravity and the circulation of
the sap; though, as I had experienced no analogous inconvenience in my
own person, I had hoped that this would not seriously affect
vegetation. I was afraid to try the effect of more liberal watering,
the more so that already the congelation of moisture upon the glasses
from the internal air, dry as the latter had been kept, was a sensible
annoyance--an annoyance which would have become an insuperable trouble
had I not taken so much pains, by directing the thermic currents upon
the walls, to keep the internal temperature, in so far as comfort
would permit--it had now fallen to 4 deg. C.--as near as possible to that
of the inner surface of the walls and windows. A careful use of the
thermometer indicated that the metallic surface of the former was now
nearly zero C., or 32 deg. F. The inner surface of the windows was somewhat
colder, showing that the crystal was more pervious to heat than the
walls, with their greater thickness, their outer and inner lining of
metal, and massive interior of concrete. I directed a current from the
thermogene upon either division of the garden, hoping thus to protect
the plants from whatever injury they might receive from the cold.
Somewhat later, perceiving that the drooping still continued, I
resolved upon another experiment, and arranging an apparatus of copper
wire beneath the soil, so as to bring the extremities in immediate
contact with their roots, I directed through these wires a prolonged
feeble current of electricity; by which, as I had hoped rather than
expected, the plants were after a time materially benefited, and to
which I believe I owed it that they had not all perished long before
the termination of my voyage.

It would be mere waste of space and time were I to attempt anything
like a journal of the weeks I spent in the solitude of this artificial
planet. As matter of course, the monotony of a voyage through space is
in general greater than that of a voyage across an ocean like the
Atlantic, where no islands and few ships are to be encountered. It was
necessary to be very frequently, if not constantly, on the look-out
for possible incidents of interest in a journey so utterly nove