"Moore," in an old almanack, speaking on the difference of light and
heat enjoyed by the inhabitants of _Saturn_, and the _earth_, says,--

"From hence how large, how strong the sun's bright ball,
But seen from thence, how languid and how small,
When the keen north with all its fury blows,
Congeals the floods and forms the fleecy snows:
'Tis heat intense, to what can there be known,
Warmer our poles than in its burning (!) zone;
One moment's cold like their's would pierce the bone,
Freeze the heart's blood, and turn us all to stone."

Were Saturn thus situated, what would the inhabitants of Herschel feel,
whose distance is still further?--pursuing this train of reasoning, the
heat in the planet Mercury would be seven times greater than on our
globe, and were the earth in the same position, all the water on its
surface would boil, and soon be turned into vapour, but as the degree of
sensible heat in any planet _does not_ depend altogether on its nearness
to the sun, the temperature of these planets may be as mild as that of
the most genial climate of our globe.

The theory of the sun being a body of fire having been long since
exploded, and heat being found to be generated by the union of the sun's
rays with the atmosphere of the earth, so the caloric contained in the
atmosphere on the surfaces of the planets may be distributed in
different quantities, according to the situation they occupy with regard
to the sun, and which is put into action by the influence of the solar
rays, so as to produce that degree of sensible heat requisite for each
respective planet. We have only to suppose that a small quantity of
caloric exists in Mercury, and a greater quantity in Herschel, which is