Year: 1875

Be warned in time. The world is to be


burned up. The rainbow keeps the word of


non-destructive promise to our eyes, but


breaks it to our hopes. After the deluge
come no more universal drownings, but ages
of whitening heat shall dry the seas up; life


shall disappear from the face of this globe;


the armament shall be rolled up like scroll;


and hideous aridity shall reign over all:
Trausser says so. Trausser Is an N. u. OF
New Orleans, to whom the Copernican sys-


be turned inside out, and unfit for use at a
fire. He discards it. To him also do the


laws of Kepler appear childish fraud, and


the elliptical orbits of the planets seem de-


lusion. ''There is," says Trausser. I'm the


sun and in the planets neither centripetal nor


centrifugal forces. The stars or suns, in ad-


vancing from west to east, cause our sun, the


earth, and all the planetary bodies to advance


in the same direction. Our globe has no need


of any primitive impulse In order to be set in


motion. If the sun came to be extinguished


suddenly the rotary movement of the earth


around its axis would diminish gradually,


until it stopped entirely, without causing any


damage upon its surface; and if subsequently


the sun recovered its power of emitting light,


the earth would resume Immediately its nor


NAL movement slowly and progressively.


The earth, on Trausser's plan, does not move
around the sun. The sun moves around a


fixed center, outside the orbit of the earth.


The point around which the earth travels is
east of the center around which the other


planets (sun included) travel and is not fixed,


but describes small circle around the general


planetary center once in each $4,000 years.


Owing to our being thus little off center,


the arcs of this circle which the earth de-


scribes at each season are unequal, and the


difference in the length of the seasons is thus


accounted for. There is a constant westward


tendency Of the sun, which delays that lumin-


ary's return to each succeeding equinox
against the order of the zodiacal signs. The
retrogradation, slight each year, bears fright
full consequences in the long run, since it will
eventually bring the sun and the earth in
deadly proximity, rs it has done before, if
Trausser knows himself. He Essays: ;About


1884 years ago the sun and the earth met in


the same side of the heavens Cat degree of


Aries, vernal equinOx,) without ceasing to


circulate each one in its own orbit. The sun


intersected at the terrestrial equator the first


meridian of the secular period in which we
are This proximity of the sun and of the
earth at their maximum occasioned the most
awful disasters in increasing more and more
the solar heat on our globe during several
centuries. The temperate zones and the
equatorial regions were reduced to have no
more, either animals or plants, under the
long action of burning SUM-" This is to
happen again. Of course such a heat will
draw the waters into the air. For hundreds
of years this sphere will be the theater of
most tremendous natural convulsions. The
burning ground will send its exhalations up
to flaming clouds, the envelope of air will
expand to enormous heights, charged with
superheated steams and gases. AS years roll
away and the baleful orb of day withdraws
the upper layers of the air will cool, and its
waters will descend into the lower, and they
in their appointed turn will fall and fall with
vast and terrible shocks, until their accumu-
lated condensations drop upon the earth in a
grand cataclysm that will wipe out all traces
of the land as it was before. And when at
subside, a new world, smiling and refreshed,
toward its next assignment with the sun.
another $4,000 years removed. Then will
come another order of creation, from the cell
to man another succession of gradual civili-
zation and enlightenment; the ground we
fancy we haYe trOd for the first time will be
another antiquity will succeed
more epochs lost to history the story Of the
rocks will be spelled out anew, and by the
time the intellect of those peoples of the fu-
ture shall have wakened into light another
grand tragedy will precede the re-enactment
of the same old catastrophe so on per-
haps forever. We are pleased to state, how
ever, that DR.. Trausser places the next crisp
ing operation at distance of time for which |
we really do feel personally obliged to him,
as it quite stills all apprehensions-
some $500 years hence The preparatory
process will be so slow, moreover, that our
Gin whom we take quite as lively |
q family interest as in our ancestors of 5000
years since) will have been gradually and |
pairlessly taken out of the way previous to
the supreme moment.