The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-13


 ration is taken the time required for dressing, the balls must be desperately short and the waltzes much cut down. However. he intimates that to eompen- sate for the rapidity with which day sue ceeds night, the sensations must be keener there than here and the inhabi- tants of Jupiter must have an agreeable elasticity of mind and body
 But is Jupiter inhabited at the present moment by beings more or less like outr selves? Telescopic observation does not favor this hypothesis.
 The more we study this planet the more different we find it from ours in re- gard to the conditions of stability neces- sary to human life. Its aspect Is similar to that which the earth must have pre- scented to the moon in the primordial epoch, when our planet, not yet solidi- fled, was surrounded by a great atmos- phere of clouds and vapors.
 Surrounded by Clouds.
 Light bands of cloud surround 1t and turn rapidly with it, according to it's dif- ferent speeds of rotation. This is the impression received yesterday. on a fine, clear night such as we have known few in this variable summer, studying with the telescope this fine planet shin ing not far from the moon. In the sketch wished to make had the greatest dif- ficulty in catching the thousand details and delicate tones of these clouds and felt they must be like vapors from a huge boiler rising to prodigious heights in the atmosphere of a world which has not yet cooled. The equatorial zone Is very brilliant and turns rapidly, like a great stream, with a speed of over 250 miles per hour. On one of the tropical bands has been noticed. especially in the last quarter of a century, an oval spot four times larger than the entire diame- ter of the earth seeming a continent in process of formation, sending forth reddish vapors. All these observations show that Jupitor is a globe in the pri- mordial state which from century will grow ever cooler, condensing and clear ing itself, and which( as I said just now, seems to be the world of the future
 This planet attracts the attention of the most indifferent. But you will read fly notice to it's right another planet, seeming a star of the first magnitude, although far less brilliant than Jupiter, and shining with a slightly leaden tinge. This Is the wonderful planet Saturn, still farther away from us than Jupiter, which shows itself to us surrounded by those fantastic rings turning round it at the speed of ten to fifteen miles per
 
 Compared with the system of Saturn the world is tiny village.
 An Interesting Subject.
 But do not wish, in this first talk, to survey all tho heavens. I merely sought to point out that there exist there inter- esting subjects for thought. Much time Is lost, it seems to me, even in the popu- lar craze for automobile racing. Possibly these pleasures might be sought with variety, and at the same time an idea might be gained of the marvels of the universe among which man moves un- thinking. Since speed is so highly prized just now, it should be known that our planetary automobile, the earth which we inhabit, runs its space at the rate of 620O miles per hour. This speed should be enough for the most ambitious, particu- larly as it entails no danger and we are rocked more gently in the silent and pure ether than we would be in a Ve- netian gondola. And we have only to open our eyes and admire. It is, perhaps, too easy, and this may be why so few schools have eyer thought of teaching true astronomy-not cosmography-in pri- I
 And yet, without astronomy, the false geocentric and anthropocentric coneep- tions would still be accepted, theology would be suprem and liberty Of con science would never have been acquired.