New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1873-11-09
Terrible Predictions Of Wise Men.

At the recent American Scientific Asso-
citation, which met at Portland, the follow
ng fearful prognostica regarding the
hereafter of poor, suffering humanity were
INDUCED in:
Professor Young, the most eminent living
student Of solar physics, read paper on
the sun. That body, he argued, is gigantic
bubble, whose crust is gradually thicken-
ing and whose size is diminishing. There Is
a constant loss of heat, which will end in
its extinction as producer OF warmth and
light. He quoted Faye, Stechi, and others
to prove that the material of the sun is
gaseous, and that these gases are retained
by some kind of a crust. Through this sur
face the tumultuous inner composition is
constantly squirting and outbreaking with
great violence. He thinks that this
cr1st may consist of sheet of
descending rain-not of water, of course,
but of the materials whose vapOrs are
known 10 exist in the solar atmosphere, and
whose condensation and combination are
supposed to furnish the solar heat" As
this peculiar rain meets the gaseous sub
stance of the sun 1t coalesces into a continu
GUS sheet, forming "a sort of bottomless
ocean, resting upon the condensed vapOrs
underneath, and pierced by innumerable
ascending Jets and bubbles This action
of the SUM- envelope will be a quenching
of the great orb upon which We depend for
heat and light. 1t will grow smaller and
more compressed and surrounded by this
crust, untlit will be SO hidden and mufied as
to be practically excluded from the economy
of the universe. The result will be intense
cold and darkness, a cessation of all animal
life, and an immediate return to original
chaos.
General J. G. Barnard described the in
terror of the earth as molten fluid. Pre-
vious notions had given the earth, however.
a rigid exterior surface from 1000 to 5000
feet deep. He refuted this theory, and
claimed for the globe upon which we live
somewhat the construction of a rubber ball
filled with melted lead. The surface is,
he thinks, a pliable coating that has been
gradually formed over the fiery mass in
side A globular form is maintained by
rapid rotary motion, the inner fluid
sustaining the soft shell in its position,
80 that the undulations are impercepti-
BILE to US. Thus we are being whiried
through space on huge globu|e, the
surface OF which floats on an interior Of
LIQUID fire. Only the rotary speed OF this
bubble keeps it together, and any disar-
ran cement or change in terrestrial phenO-
mena would resolve itself into vapor. Gen
eral Barnard does not believe that the sur
face is of an essentially different compost
ton from the liquid interior-it has only
been condensed sufficiently to form sort
of capsule The tenure of the worlds ex-
istence. therefore, is exceedingly uncertain.
ANY great disturbing infuence-the break
ing out of huge volcano, any change In
the surface that would render it brittle, the
impact of a heavy meteor or comet-may,
in a moment, immediate it, leaving human
ity to whirling death amid the horrors OF
inorganic space.
Mr. H. F. Walling began an essay on
"The Dissipation OF Energy by saying:
"Since the days of the ancents it has been
known that all motion is gradually devel-
oped by friction, and must finally cease uu-
less maintained by external power" The
heat power of the sun, which he regarded
as the motive power of the earth, ia being
exhausted by the prodigioQs lavishness of
it's expenditure 1t is supposed, he said,
that the satellite will fall into planets,
planets into suns and suns into a common
centre, after which darkness, silence and
death will reign" He was not without
shadow of hope, however. He saw two
possible chances for a pOstpOnement at
least of the dreadful catastrophe: First,
series OF natural chemical evOlutlOns at
tracing to the sun a vast amount OF COM
bustible material; and second, the infinite
to permit never-ending concentration OF
masses. One dreaded effect of loss of
sun power, he said, is a displacement OF at
forces. Tidal influences or plan
etary collisions may hasten the final dread
full catastrophe which will be a slowing OF
the machinery of the universe, until grow
ing stagnation eliminates in total extinc-
ton of life forces.
Professor Franklin B. Hough foretold
perpetual drouth-the result of a clearing
off of the forests. "The contrast" he said,
"between and sunburnt pasture, and one
with clumps of trees, must
have been noticed by every careful observer.
The fact that furniture in houses too much
humid influence of trees, and the results of
woodland shade explain the fullness of
springs and streams in the forest, which
dry up and disappear when the trees are
The rapdity with which the
forests are disappearing has already been
matter of alarm; but when we consider the
effect upon streams-practlcal illustrations
of large ones being lessened and small ones
extin guished-there is cause for fright.
Land will become unwatered, and conse-
quently sterile; crops will lessen in volume
until the arid and treeless plains refuse to
respond to the Indictment of the farmer;
universal famine will ensue, and the world,
entirely depopulated by starvation, will
sink into uuinhabitiveness, until some new
change calls another form of life into ex
istence.
DR. LIE Conte, the new president of the
association, read a paper on the enormous
increase and destructiveness of injurious
insects. The present actual annual damage
done by insects to crops in the United States
is over $4,000, 600, yet these figures give but
an linking of what the increase promises
for the future. Just row," says DR.. LIE
Conte, "a portion of the. insect tribes are
sufficiently numerous by nature to inHict
injury upon man and his possessions; but
civilization destroys the balances of life
which naturally keep down increase, and
permits in the case OF insects-thOse prevl-
Ously insignificant in numbers-tO become
prominent actors in a work of destruction
The only methods suggested by this
scientist to avert calamitous plague were
" to abandon the crops and starve out the
noxious insects" or to establish "a system
of checks on their increase equivalent to
those existing before civilization inter
fered." Either of these plans are, of
course, impracticable. The impending
dilemma seems to he an increase OF insects
so vast that the plague of Egypt will be
more than produced, and that all vegeta-
ton, and finally starving and helpless man
will be eaten.
All of which argues an early dropping of
the curtain upon the tieeting show of life.
We quote:
q would not live always; ask not to stay
Where storm after storm rises dark DER the way;
The few lurid mornings that dawn or US here
Are enough for LIES woes-full enough for Its
Cheer"
IN 49,