THE LAST DAYS OF THE WORLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9307, 16 September 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE LAST DAYS OF THE WORLD.

FINAL END OF OUR GLOBE.

BIRTH OF A NEW UNIVERSE. Ik the Cosmopolitan Magazine for March M. Camille Flammarion, the French as tronomer, concludes his imaginative sketcl of the destruction of the world, a resumt of the first portions of which we publisher last week. The following are some ex tracts from the concluding article :— ONLY TWO HABITABLE REGIONS. The last habitable regions of the globe Were two wide valleys near the equator, the basins of dried-up seas, valleys ot slight depth, for the general level was almost absolutely uniform. No mountain peaks, ravines or wild gorges, not a single wooded valley or precipice was to be seen ; the World was one vast plain, from which rivers and seas had gradually disappeared. But yjt the action of meteorological agents, rainfall and streams, had diminished in intensity with the loss of water, the last hollows of the sea bottom had not been entirely filled up, and shallow valleys remained, vestiges of the former structure of the globe. In these a little ice and moisture were left, but the circulation of water in the atmosphere had ceased, and the rivers flowed in subterranean channels as in invisible veins. As the atmosphere contained no aqueous vapour, the sky was always cloudless and there was neither rain nor snow. The sun, less dazzling and les3 hot than formerly, shone with the yellowish splendour of a topaz. The colour of the sky was sea-green rather than blue. The volume of the atmosphere had diminished considerably. Its oxygen and nitrogen had become in part fixed in metallic combinations, as oxides and nitrides, and its carbonic acid had slowly increased, as vegetation, deprived of water, became more and more rare and absorbed an ever-decreasing amount of this gas. But the mass of the earth, owing to the constant fall of meteorites, bolides, and uranolites, had increased with time, so that the atmosphere, though considerably less in volume, had retained its density and exerted nearly the same pressure. THE LAST INHABITANTS. Such was the condition of the earth. The last representatives of tho human race had survived all these physical transformations solely by virtue of its genius of invention and power of adaptation. Its last efforts had been directed toward extracting nutritious substances from the air, from eubterranean water and from plants, and replacing the vanished vapour of the air by buildings and roofs of glass. It was necessary at any cost to capture these solar rays and to prevent their radiation into space. It was easy to store up this heat in largo quantities, for the sun shone unobscured by any cloud and the day was fifty-five hours. The mean temperature in the open air during the daytime was not very low, not falling below 10 degrees. Notwithstanding the changes which the ages had wrought; in vegetable life, no species of plants could exist, even in this equatorial zone. As for the other latitudes, they had been totally uninhabitable for thousands of years, in spite of every effort made to live in them. In the latitudes of Paris, Nice, Rome, Naples, Algiers, and Tunis all protective atmospheric action had ceased, and the oblique rays of the sun had proved insufficient to warm the soil, which was frozen to a great depth, like a veritable block of ice. The world's population had diminished from ten milliards to nine, to eight, and then to seven, one-half the surface of the globe being then habitable- As the habitable zone became more and more restricted to the equator, the population had still further diminished, as had also the mean length of human life, and the day came when only a few hundred millions remained, Bcatt-ered in groups along the equator, and maintaining life only by the artifices of a laborious and scientific industry. END OF THE HUMAN RACE. Later still, toward the end, only two groups of a few hundred beings were left, occupying the last surviving centres of industry. From all the rest of the globe the human race had slowly and inexorably disappeared—dried up, exhausted, degenerated, from century to century through the lack of an assimilable atmosphere and sufficient food. Its iasb remnants seemed tc have lapsed back into barbarism, vegetating like the Esquimaux. These two ancient centres of civilisation, themselves yielding to decay, had survived only at tho cost ol a constant struggle between industrial genius and implacable nature. Even here, between the tropics and the equator, the two remaining groups of human beings which still contrived to exist in face of a thousand hardships which yearly became more insupportable, did so only by subsisting, so to speak, on what their predecessors had left behind. These twc ocean valleys, one of which was near the bottom of what is now the Pacific Ocean, the other to the south of the present island of Ceylon, had lormerly been the sites oi two immense cities of glass—iron and glass having been for a long time the material! chiefly employed in building construction They resembled vast winter gardens, with out upper storeys, with transparent ceiling! of immense height. Here were to be fount the last plants, except those cultivated it the subterranean galleries leading to riven Bowing underground. Elsewhere the surfac* of the earth was a ruin, and even here onb the last vestiges of a vanished greatnes were to be seen.

THE DEAD EARTH. The earth was dead. The other planets also had died one after the other. The sun was extinguished. Bub the stars still shone; there were still suns and worlds. No genius, no magician could recall the vanished past, when the earth floated bathed in light, with its broad green fields waking to the morning sun, its rivers winding like long serpents through the verdant meadows, its woods alive with the songs of birds, its forests filled with deep and mysterious shadows, its seas heaving with the tides or roaring in the tempests, its mountain slopes furrowed with rushing streams and cascades, its gardens enamelled with flowers, its nests of birds and cradles of children, and its toiling population, whose activity had transformed it and who lived so joyously a life perpetuated by the delights of an endless love. All this happiness seemed eternal. What has become of those mornings and evenings, of those flowers and those lovers, of that light and perfume, of those harmonies and joys, of those beauties and dreams ? All is dead, has disappeared in the darkness of night. The world dead, all the planets dead, the sun extinguished. The solar system annihilated, time itself suspended. THE SUN GOES OUT. But the sun also went out. After having so long poured upon his celestial children his vivifying beams, the black spots upon his surface increased in number and in extent, his brilliant photosphere grew dull and his hitherto dazzling surface became congealed. An enormous red ball took the place of the dazzling centre of the vanished world. For a long time this enormous star maintained a high surface temperature, and a sorb of phosphorent atmosphere; its virgin soil, illumined by the light of the stars and by the electric influences which formed a kind of atmosphere, gave birth to a marvellous flora, to an unknown fauna, to beings differing absolutely in organisation from those who had succeeded each other upon the worlds of its system. But for the sun also the end came, and the hour sounded on the timepiece of destiny when the whole solar system was stricken from the book ol life. And one after another the stars, each of which is a sun, a solar system, shared the same fate, yet the universe continued t< exist as it does to dayA NEW UNIVERSE IS BORN. Long after the death of the earth, of the giant planets and the central luminary, while our old and darkened sun was still speeding through boundless space, with itf dead worlds on which terrestrial and planetary life had once engaged in the futile struggle for daily existence, another extinct sun, issuing from the depths of in finifcy, collided obliquely with it anc brought it to rest. Then in the vast night of space, from the shock of these two mighty bodies was sud denly kindled a stupendous conflagration, and an immense gaseous nebula was formed; which trembled tor an instant like a flaring game, and then sped on into regions un known. Its temperature was several mil lion degrees. All which here* below hat been earth, water, air, minerals, plants atoms, all which had constituted man, hii flesh, his palpitating heart, his flashing eye his armed hand, his thinking brain, hii entrancing beauty; the victor and the van

quished, the executioner and his victim, and those inferior souls still wearing the fetters of matter—all were changed into fire. And so with the worlds of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the rest). Ib was the resurrection of visible nature. But those superior souls which had acquired immortality, continued to live for ever in the hierarchy of the invisible psychic universe. The conscious existence of mankind had attained an ideal Stat*. Mankind had passed by transmigration through the worlds to a new life with God, and freed from the burdens of matter, soared with an endless progress in eternal light. The immense gaseous nebula, which absorbed all former worlds, thus transformed into vapour, began to turn upon itself. And in the zones of condensation of this primordial star mist, new worlds were born, as heretofore the earth was. So another universe began, whose genesis some future Moses and Laplace would tell, a new creation, extraterrestrial, superhuman, inexhaustible, resembling neither the earth nor Mars, nor Saturn, nor the sun. And new humanities arose, new civilisations, new vanities, another Babylon, another Thebes, another Athens, another Rome, another Paris, new palaces, temples, glories and loves. And all these things possessed nothing of the earth, whose very memory had passed away like a shadow. And these universities passed away in their turn. Bud infinite space remained, peopled with worlds and stars and souls and suns, and time went on for ever. For there can be neither end nor beginning.