A LIFELESS ORB.

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 63

A LIFELESS ORB.

By a Banker

The receni terrible outburst of volcanic ei.ergy in the Weal liuli-js has brcnght fcicibly to cur notice the prodigious forces winch arc ever at work in the interior of our earth, which, were it r.oi for the existence of these saiety valves, would probably, from time to time, shatter a bectiou of Us thin crust in the tiemendcus effort to break loase.

But our beautiful sa'elhte, the moor, has been the scene of for more wolert i.nd tieircndous volcanic convulsio.is than ever this earth lias experienced. The entire hemisphere which alone hus over been been from the ecrth is torn and rent by innumerable chatms, extinct volcanoes of gigantic dimensions, and mountains ju.d lefty barricades of lsva. The craters of our most important volcanoes do not ex-e^d three or four m;ies m diametei ; those of the moon, however, are vastly mure extrusive. The diameter ot the ciater of Mount Copernicus is 56 miles , of lycho 54 miles, while that of Mount Ptolemy is no less than 114 miles, with a circumference of 343 miles. And the depth of these vailed craters is so great that Mount Blanc itself, if dropped into one of them, would be an iusign.fic.uit hill, and its summit would hs many thousand fest beneath the top of the almost perpendicular la\a-\vall surrounding the great crater.

As more than 32,000 of these extinct -volcanoes have been counted— and probably that side of the moon which is for ever hidden from our view is similar in character — our satellite must indeed have been a*- scene of wild fury when all those fiery hypocausts were belching forth sheets of flame and incandescent rocks and lava, ff a crater like Mont Pelce, two or three miles in diameter, when m action is such an awe-inspiring spectacle, what must have been the scene when, for instance, Mount Schickard, the crater of which is about 400 miles in circumference, was in full eruption. Ten thousand square miles oi mighty flames, a blazing cyclon-e of 1 oaring fires sweexnng lound the stupendous glowing caldron; now flashily perhaps a hundred miles upwards to the midnight sky; now gieat tongues and forks of vivid, burning gases wildly issuing forth and mingling with the fires of hundreds of other burning mountains — a world on fire.

And so until the end: every drop of water, every vestige of air resolved by the intense heat into their constituent gases, burnt up and lo%t in the cth->r ; every trrce of life destroyed, consumed in the ardent fiery furnace, which ever raged until its fury was exhausted, until at length it? last quivering pulsations flickered out, and all was quenched and still.

And now she is dead. But though drear and lifeless, yet beautiful in death ; perhaps, to iis, fairer and more lovely than when throbbing with life, and rent with the convulsions of conflicting elements.

Sic ltur ad astra. Through the gats of death we pass to our immortality. And He who for us passed through that gate — surrounded with horrors such as no civ Id of earth will ever endure, for He, the pure and holy One, was bearing the incubus of our sins — is now ready to open the bright further gate, that of the Kingdom of Glory, to all who will but go to Him as their Redeemer.

— The French Post Office estimates that no fewer than 93,000 letters were stolen last year from pillar boxes in France. Experiments are being made by fitting some of the boxes with steel teeth, which prevent the extraction of letters, in the hope of guarding against theso thefts in the future.