Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/218

182 the ultimate source of all the motions observed on the surface of our planet, and of all vegetable and animal life on it; since it is by their vivifying action that plants are elaborated from inorganic matter, to become in their turn the support of animals and of man, and the source of our great coal deposits, so felicitously and truly called by the late George Stephenson “bottled sunshine!” By the unequal action of the solar heat are produced all winds and storms, and those disturbances in the electric equilibrium of the atmosphere which give rise to the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. By the solar rays the waters of the sea are drawn up into the air in vapour, to descend again in rain, irrigating and fertilizing the land, and producing springs and rivers. To their action and influence must mainly and primarily be attributed the chemical compositions and decompositions of the elements of nature, nay, even the phenomena of volcanic activity.

Judging by what we see around us on our own globe, and by the way in which every corner of it is crowded with living beings, and arguing from the most natural of all analogies, most, if not all, of the other larger planets of our solar system must be held to be habitable and inhabited worlds like our earth.

By nations in the infancy of intellectual development the heavens above and around us might have been looked upon as a kind of solid arch, vault, or canopy, hung with greater and lesser lamps, intended