Are the Stars Peopled?

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1585, 15 April 1887, Page 2

Are the Stars Peopled?

Proctor, in Knowledge, says: It is almost impossibleto say under what conditions life is possible. Men of science have lately been taught this in a very striking manner. For judging w hat they know of the state of things at the bottom of the deep net, they conclude that theie could be no living creature there. Tliey reasoned lhat the prpss'ire exerted by the water would crush the life out of any known creature, which was unquestionably true. A piece of the hardest and densest wood sunk to those depths has the water literally forced into its very substance, and the tremendous mail of the crocodile, or the thick skin of the rhinoceros, would be unable to resist the enormous pressure exerted by the water at the bottom of the deep seas. Yet it is known that creatures not only exist down there, but that, notwithstanding the great darkness that must prevail there, these creatures are provided with the means of seeing. So unlike are they to all other creatnres, however, that they are unable to live out of their native depth*, and when dragged up by the dredges they are burst asunder killed before reaching the surface. This would teach us that although it may be proved that in some inaccessible world like Venus or any of her fellow planets, the conditions which prevail are not such as would be convenient to terrestial creatures or are even snch as no creatures known to us could endure even for a few minutes, life may nevertheless exist. It is indeed tolerably certain that if there be living creatures in Venus (as for my part I little doubt), and if among these creatures there be any which possess reasonable powers Buch as ours (which is not as certain), it must appear to such reasonable beings in Venus at least as difficult to understand how our earth can be inhabited as we find it to conceive what nature of creatures they may be which exist in Venua.-