Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/859

Rh, the sun, whose inhabitants, possessing immortality, form a part of the divine government ruling over this portion of the astronomical system.

To merit such superior happiness man must apply himself during his life on earth to perfecting himself, to purifying his soul, loving his neighbor, spreading happiness about him, increasing his knowledge. He who, on the contrary, perseveres in injustice and ignorance will be condemned to recommence his earthly career, and that again and again until he is fit to leave this globe.

One attractive feature of M. Figuier's interplanetary heaven which he develops in his book is the novel means of travel he imagines to exist there. "Since science," he writes, "excuses itself from explaining the nature of the comets and the role they play in the universe, it is permitted to the imagination to say a word on the subject.

"Is it forbidden to believe that certain comets, notably those that return into our solar system, are agglomerations of super-human beings which have just finished a voyage in the profound depths of the sky and end their trip by returning into the sun? According to this hypothesis, these comets are pleasure trains made up of the inhabitants of ethereal spaces."

In the last conversation I ever had with him I asked him, just as I was about to say good-by, "M. Figuier, do you really believe in your comets made up of souls?"

His stern face lighted up. "Ah, my excursion trains! Who knows? who knows? Perhaps I shall travel in one. But that, you know, is imagination."

And when we rose to leave the salon, and I stopped to regard for the last time the gay wreaths and bouquets on the walls, he added with a nod of complete conviction, "But of one thing I am sure—there I shall succeed with my scientific theater."

observatory, on the Rocher des Bosses, Mont Blanc, about fourteen thousand five hundred feet above the sea, has developed into a really comfortable abode of eight rooms, furnished with adequate means of keeping-out the cold and the snow and with conveniences for housekeeping. The walls and windows and outer door are double. The house has a kitchen and shop near the entrance; a room for guides, with five beds a provision room; a director's room, with two beds; a registering room; a photograph and spectroscope room; a guest chamber, with three beds; and a physical laboratory. A peculiarity of the kitchen utensils is the construction of the kettles to compensate for the lowered boiling point of the mountain height. The observatory, instituted in 1890, was at first devoted to meteorology; but since the new observatory was erected on the summit, more attention has been given in it to terrestrial physics.