Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1896 — WE MIGHT HAVE HAD WINGS. [ARTICLE]

WE MIGHT HAVE HAD WINGS.

Man Reduced ito Ueintr Legs Because the Earth Was So Attractive. If ths attractions of the earth ts-ere Jess powerful our winged tribes ijiight leave received a. much greater development. In virtue of the unquestionable principle known as “the struggle for existence.” these winged creatures, dominatingall others, would ha ye been the strongest. Progress woul<J have been effected alot?,g this line. The-su-perior race, the human race, would have bcen a winged race. These simple considerations, which it may be easy to extend much further, are enough to convince us that our human form is essentially terrestrial, and that the Inhabitants of Mars cannot resemble us. They are .different. .Upon Mars, for example, one might suppose, without scientific heresy. that the remarkable lightness of their bodies may have developed the winged race more highly in the direction indicated, and that the inhabitants of this planet may have received the privilege of flight Does this amount to saying that, for this reason, they must necessarily have ■the fo'Pm. of birds? No. The bats, are they not‘mammals Which suckle their young? Is its'aying, then, that we must imagine them under this form? Not at all. May they not rather be like dragon flies fluttering in the air above the lakes and eanals? As to this point we can Imagine everything and prove nothing. It is even highly probable that the reality is something absolutely different from all our terrestrial conceptions. . On the one hand the lightness of the Martian beings is favorable to their winged constitution. On the other hand, however, the atmosphere is hardly well fitted to sustain them. But still we recall that terrestrial zoology furnishes instances of birds which are very heavy, such as condors and the vultures, and these are just the ones which fly highest in the most rarefied regions of ou© atmosphere; they htive been observed even above ths summits of the, Himalayas, the Andes and the Cordilleras,at elevations of from 8,000 to 9,000 meters (27,000 to 30,000 feet), where they can still soar freely, thanks to the enormous spread of their wings. Nor must we lose sight of the fact that a human being weighing 70 kilograms (154 pounds) would weigh not more than 26 kilograms (56 pounds) If transported to the globe of Mars.— N’orth American Review.