The most famous of all the markings in Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, which became conspicuous in 1878, since when the spot itself, or at least the nest in which it lay, has always been visible. It has been identified with a great red spot observed by Hooke and Cassini in 1664-6, that appeared and vanished again eight times between 1665 and 1708. It therefore has had a history practically as long as our telescopic knowledge of the planet, and may be looked upon as in some sort a permanent feature. Yet that it is not in the nature of a portion of a solid crust is clear. It occupies on Jupiter much the position and relative area of Australia on the Earth, but whereas Australia of necessity rotates in one piece with all the other continents, the Great Red Spot has a rotation period which is neither that of the equatorial belt, nor of the quickly moving white spots, and is not itself stable. An "Australia on the loose" is impossible, even unthinkable here, but the Great Red Spot, for all its long duration, is mobile and inconstant, and is therefore no portion of a solid permanent crust. The giant planet Jupiter, therefore, offers us an example of what we may call a "semi-sun"; a world still bubbling with tremendous energies of its own, still pulsing with its own inherent heat, still without a solid crust; probably without a solid nucleus, liquid or vaporous throughout. Whatever the future may hold for such an orb, it is clearly no world for habitation at present. Full of colour, and movement, and change as it is, it lacks the Earth's "gloom of iron substance," which is necessary, no less than its veiling by the plant, as a stage for "the passion and perishing of mankind." But if Jupiter be a semi-Sun, still a source of heat, perhaps even of light, can it yield the means of life to its satellites? For Jupiter is sun-like, not merely in its own condition, but also in that it is the centre and ruler of a system of its own. We know already of eight satellites revolving round it. Of these eight, only four--the four discovered by Galileo, in the first days of his possession of a telescope--need be considered; the other four are of the same order of size as the asteroids, and are indeed much smaller than Ceres. But the Galilean satellites are of a higher rank. Europa, the smallest, is in size a twin to the Moon; Callisto, the outermost, is almost exactly the size of Mercury; Io, the innermost, is midway between the two in its dimensions. But Ganymede, the largest, is almost comparable with Mars, its diameter being 0·45 that of the Earth instead of the 0·53 of Mars.