Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/275

Rh the purpose by Mr. E. C. Slipher has proved equally void of atmospheric hint.

With the loss of water and of air, all possibility of development departs. Not only must every organism die, but even the inorganic can no longer change its state. In the extinction thus not only of inhabitants but of the habitat that made them possible, occurs a curious inversion of the order we are familiar with in the life-history of organisms. In planets it is the grandchildren that die first, then the children, and lastly their surviving parent. And this is not accidental, but inevitably consequent upon their respective origins. For the off-spring, as we may spell it with a hyphen, of any cosmic mass is of necessity smaller than that from which it issued. Being smaller, it must age quicker. In the natural order of events, then, its end must be reached first.

Such has been the course taken, or still taking, by the bodies of our solar family. The latest generation has already succumbed to this ebbing of vitality with time. Every one of the satellites of the planets—those of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and our own Moon—is practically dead; born so the smaller which never were alive. Our own Moon carries its decrepitude on its face. To all intents and purposes its life is past; and that it had at one time a very fiery existence, the great lunar craters amply testify. It is now, for all its