Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/138

108 takes place in what is really a seething furnace, the fiery glow of which we catch below the vast ebullition of cloud in the cherry hue of its darker portions. Distance has merged the turmoil into the semblance of quiescence and left only its larger secular changes to show. Even so the Colorado River from the brink of the Grand Cañon is seen apparently at rest, the billows of its rapids so stereotyped to stability one takes the rippled sand bank for the river and the billows of the river for the ripple marks of its banks.

At twice the distance of Jupiter we cross the orbit of Saturn. Here the ringed planet, with an annual sweep of twenty-nine and a half of our years, pursues his majestic circuit of the Sun. Diademed with three or more circlets of light and diamonded by ten satellites, he rivals in his cortege that of his own lord. In some ways his surpasses the Sun's. For certainly his retinue is the more spectacular of the two; the more so that it is much of it fairly comprised within a single glance. Very impressive Saturn is as, attended thus, he sails into the field of view.

In our survey we may best begin with his globe. If Jupiter's compression is striking, Saturn's is positively startling when well displayed. This happens but at rare intervals. As the plane of his equator is almost exactly that of the rings, the flattening is conspicuous only on those occasions when the rings disappear because their