Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/614

596 before the earth is so broken up; for celestial bodies pass through their cosmical cycles in times somewhat proportional to their magnitude. Therefore, long before the earth meets this, her final doom, the moon will have been so broken up that her "lunar meteorites" will have been placed in the mineralogical museums, I trust, at less than "two dollars a pound."

Accordingly, we must look for the origin of our meteorites up away from the sun. We believe that they are fragments of some of the more minute asteroids of which hundreds yet continue to move between Mars and Jupiter. The frequent stony meteorites now falling, therefore, probably are the forerunners of a period of frequent iron meteorites, corresponding to the deeper portions of the same minute planet, the exterior layers of which have been reaching us quite frequently of late. The meteoric irons of our cabinets must have belonged to another asteroid, broken up at an earlier date than the asteroid now yielding the large and frequent crops of meteoric stones.

This is not the place for a more complete development of this view. But, as every reader inevitably would ask the question, "Whence these meteorites?" we deemed it best to give our answer.

The nebular theory fully accounts for the planetary system in its glory; but this harmony is finally followed by a breaking up and destruction of each body, which then as meteorites continue to move, truly cosmical fossils, until they find a temporary rest on the orbs which are nearer the grand centre of our world, the glorious sun.



LD FULLER"—wise, witty, and thoroughly practical—pronounced by Coleridge to be "incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men"—tells us that "houses ought to be built to live in, and not to look at;" and it seems strange that a truth so obvious should require to be enunciated by an authority so great.

Since Fuller's time we have in all respects vastly progressed. We are eminently a practical people, and are undisturbed in our utilitarian pursuits by purely æsthetic proclivities. But, if we have not realized the beautiful in architecture, we ought at least to have advanced toward the attainment of utility. Unfortunately, however, the aim and development of our national characteristics have not taken the useful direction of making our houses "fit to live in"—but only to let, and to sell!

To live in a house in the Fullerian sense means, of course, existence therein under the best attainable conditions of health, ease, 