Year: 1874




The Heavens Shall he ROilet
If Together as 50 Scroll - Tht
Wiping Oyl~g gf Creation =
QuenchIog The sun and De
n Isi"IishilIg the Earth.


e Few know the import of the recen


meeting of the American Scientific


Association at Portland. In its de


velopments of new horrors in store


for poor humanity it was awfully


prolific It's members We'd with each


other in predictions of coming con


vulsions of nature, and sustained thei1
arguments with truths brought to
light from the deepest and darkest
wells of science That humanity is
Ito be obliterated was the gist of five
Prpers read by five of the most scien-
lie, trusted, and celebrated mem
bers of the Association. A terrible
and total extinction of animal life
was foretold by all, the only question
being which of the five horrors shall
first develop itself and perform the
work of universal destruction.


/ THE sun TO BE ExTINGUIsHED.


Prof. Young, the most eminent
living student of solar physics, read
paper on the sun. That body, he
argued, is a gigantic bubble, whose
crust is gradually thickening and
whose size is diminishing. There is
constant loss of heat, which will
end in its extinction as a producer of
warmth and light. He quoted Faye,
Secchi, and others, to prove that the
material of the sun is gaseous, and
that these gases are retained by
some kind of crust. Through this
surface the tumultuous inner compo-
sition is constantly sporting and out
breaking with great violence. He
thinks that this crust '"may consist
of sheet of descending rain-not of
water, of course, but of the materials
whose yapors are known to exist in
the solar atmosphere, and whose con
densation and combination are sup
posed to furnish the solar heat" As
this peculiar rain meets the gaseous
substance of the sun it coalesces into
a continuous sheet, forming "a sort
of bottomless ocean, resting upon
the condensed vapors underneath,
and pierced by innumsrable ascend
ing jets and bubbles. This action
of the suns envelop will be quench-
ing of the great orb upon which we
depend for light and heat. 1t will
grow smaller and more compressed,
and surrounded by this crust, until
it 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 i'm
mediate return to original chaos.


FnrTr


General ]. G. Barnard described |
tie interior of the earth as molten
fluid. Previous notions had given
the earth, however, a rigid exterior
surface from one to two thousand
feet deep. He refuted this theory,
and claimed for the globe upon which
we live somewhat the construction
of a rubber ball filed with melted |
lead. The surface is, he thinks, a
pliable coating that has been gradu-
ally formed over the fiery mass inside
A globular form is therefore main
tanned by rapid rotary motion, the
inner fluid sustaining the soft shell
IN its position, so that the undula-
tions are perceptible to us. Thus,
we are being whirled through space
ON a huge globule, the surface of
which floats on an interior of liquid
fire. Only the rotary speed of this
bubble keeps it together, and any
disarrangement or change in terres-
trial phenomena would transform it |
all into fluid that would resolve it.
self into vapor Gen. Barnard does
not believe that the surface is of an
essentially different composition
from the liquid interior;-it has only
been condensed sufficiently to form
a sort of capsule. The tenure of the
worlds existence, therefore, is ex-
ceedingly uncertain. Any disturbing
infuence-the breaking out of a huge
volcano, any change in the surface
that would render it brittle, the i'm
pact of a heavy meteor or comet
may in a moment immediate it, leav-
ing humanity to wllirling death amid
the horrors of inorganic space.


DARKNESS, SILENCE AND DEATH.


Mr.. H. F. Walling began an essay
on ''The Dissipation of Energy"
by saying: "Since the days of the
ancients it is known that all motion
is gradually developed by friction,
and must finally cease unless sus-
tanned by external power" The heat
power of the sun, which he regarded
as the motive power of the earth, is
being exhausted by the prodigious
lavishness of the expenditure. 1t is
supposed, he said, that the satellites
will fall into planets, planets into
suns, and suns into common centre,
after which darkness, silence and
death will reign" He was not with