luxuriant autumnal foliage! (p. 47.) To return to Jupiter: this
planet, indeed, has inconveniently short days. "In his 'Picture
of the Heavens,' the German astronomer, Littrow (these Germans
think of nothing but gormandizing), asks how the people of
Jupiter order their meals in the short interval of five hours."
Nevertheless, says our author, the great planet is compensated
for this inconvenience by its equable and delicious climate.

In view, however, of our author's more striking and original
disclosures, one would suppose that all this discussion of the
physical conditions of existence on the various planets might
have been passed over without detriment to the argument. After
these efforts at proving (for M. Figuier presumably regards this
rigmarole as proof) that all the members of our solar system are
habitable, the interplanetary ether is forthwith peopled thickly
with "souls," without any resort to argument. This, we suppose,
is one of those scientific truths which as M. Figuier tells us,
precede and underlie demonstration. Upon this impregnable basis
is reared the scientific theory of a future life. When we die our
soul passes into some other terrestrial body, unless we have been
very good, in which case we at once soar aloft and join the noble
fraternity of the ether-folk. Bad men and young children, on
dying, must undergo renewed probation here below, but ultimately
all pass away into the interplanetary ether. The dweller in ether
is chiefly distinguished from the mundane mortal by his acute
senses and his ability to subsist without food. He can see as if
through a telescope and microscope combined. His intelligence is
so great that in comparison an Aristotle would seem idiotic. It
should not be forgotten, too, that he possesses eighty-five per
cent of soul to fifteen per cent of body, whereas in terrestrial