A man can stand alongside a train when motionless and lean against it, or put his hand on it, as safely as on the depot, but when in motion of thirty or forty miles an hour, it would be almost sure to cost him his life. Attraction can hardly be possible except by affinity; iron can be attracted by a magnet no more than wood, unless possessed of that peculiar quality of being magnetic. Mr. Edison’s experiments have to be confined entirely to such bodies of ore. That attraction of affinity exists there can be no doubt, as exhibited in plants, insects, birds and animals, both quadruped and biped, otherwise courtship and marriage and all means of propagating species would be for naught and neglected. It is a general supposition that we derive our heat from the Sun by direct rays, but it is doubtful if it comes only through its innumerable rays of light through which the Earth and the planets revolve, and here friction puts in one of its special works. The common idea that noon-day is the time for the greatest heat is not always justified, for other influences, such as friction in the atmosphere, can make midnight warmer than noon. The concentrated rays of the Sun at midday of course bring them so closely together, and direct, that the Earth’s revolution comes squarely across them, as can be demonstrated across the teeth of a comb, thus showing a greater pressure than drawn obliquely. That heat can come directly from the Sun seems an impossibility without some medium of contact, which through the coldness and a barrenness of space does not seem to exist. As we arrive at certain altitudes in the mountains, we find perpetual snow and ice, and the same class of atmosphere is encountered anywhere else rising in a balloon to similar heights. It would be natural to expect an increasing warmth as we get away from the Earth toward the Sun, but the reverse being the case, it is hard to imagine what the temperature of space 1,000 miles away must be. The question is likely to be asked, if the Sun does not send out heat, how is it obtained? The answer will be in accordance with the first proposition in this brief work. All heat is obtained by Friction, in absence of which there can be no heat. The Earth gets its heat mostly by friction through its atmosphere. The mass of atmosphere surrounding our planet is like an ocean made up of gases and elements that produce both water and land. The revolution of the Earth through that atmosphere at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, seventeen miles a minute, or nearly four miles every second, is something as incomprehensible to our minds as the distance to the Sun. Only for this friction for a certain distance from the surface, the same condition of cold would no doubt exist on the surface as on the tops of the high ranges of mountains.