over; and, consequently, speculations regarding the habitableness of the heavenly bodies, have long . been familiar. Every advance in telescopic power revealed some new resemblance, and thus strengthened the presumption, that the planets might be the abode of life and intelligence. Atmospheres and atmospheric phenomena were discovered in several of the planets. Clouds and belts corresponding to our trade-winds were plainly visible in Jupiter and Saturn. Cyclones were detected, and the rate of the wind might be calculated. The white spots at the poles of Mars indicated the existence of snow, and the progress of deposition and melting could actually be traced,—the one pole gathering snow in winter, and the other losing it in summer. In more recent times, still more singular evidence was afforded of the identity, as to chemical composition, of our globe with the family of planets to which it belongs. The meteoric stones, which occasionally fall, may be regarded as hand specimens of the planetary bodies. It is not necessary to hold, that they are actually broken off from the moon or any of the planets. It is sufficient that they do not belong to the earth—that they are themselves cosmical bodies circulating round the sun, like any of the planets. These stones are now, almost universally, held to be little planets; and they certainly afford a presumption, that the other planets have similar chemical elements. It might be imagined, that
