Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1886 — Life in Other Spheres. [ARTICLE]

Life in Other Spheres.

Proctor argues that every celestial body must at some time pass through a life supporting period, which must be very short compared with the duration of the world’s own existence. Concerning the date of life era in other worlds than ours he remarks; “In the presence of time-intervals seen to be at once infinitely great and infinitely little—infinitely great compared with the duration of our earth, infinitely little by comparison with the eternities amid which they are lost—what reason can we have, when viewing any orb in space from our little earth, for saying now is the time when that orb is, like our earth, the abode of life ? Why should life on that orb synchronize with life oh the earth? Ate not, on the contrary, the chances infinitely great against such ia, coincidence ? If, as Helmholtz has well said, the duration of life on our earth is but the minutest ripple in the infinite ocean of time, and the duration of life bn any other planet of like minuteness, what- reason can we have for supposing that those remote, minute, and no way associated waves of?Sfe mtfst needs be abreast of each other on the infinite ocean whose surface thej scarcely ripple ? * * * It is more probable that life is wanting than that lift exists at the present time. Nevertheless, it is at least as probable that everj member of. ’nur order—planet, sun. galaxy, and so onward to higher anc higher orders endlessly—has been, ii now, or will hereafter be, life-support ing ‘after its kind? "

There is an excellent chance for th< inventor of a simple peat-cutting ma chine for Russia, which can be workec by a team of horses, and would take the place between- the ordinary hand cut-ting-machine and those worked by steam, the latter of which cost aboifl id,500. Large deposits of peat exists in the country, which it is intended to use instead of coal as soon as they can be worked cheaper than coal. In fact, on the Northern railway of Russia the locomotives hitherto burning wood oi coal are being adapted for peat-burning, as a considerable saving is expected tc be realized. The hand by the way. have the drawback that the peat cannot be worked below eight feet, while the steam cutting-machined penetrate twenty feet and reach a superior kind of peat. T’/ ?