"Do not be appalled by our discovery," he continued; "it is as simple and natural as that which proved the earth a sphere, when the wisdom of the ages had declared it flat. The old arguments against its rotundity were quite as potent as any ever brought to refute the theory of a hollow globe, first advanced by Captain Symmes. How could the earth be round? Would not all the water run off on the underside? The thing was absurd. ’How could the world be hollow and habitable? Would not the inside be dark? and would not the water drop from the upper to the lower half?’ Why does not the moon drop? The land and water above us are so distant, and so screened by the atmosphere as to be invisible even if we were thousands of miles above our present position. The center of gravity lies somewhere within the crust, which is probably nowhere more than a hundred miles thick. "The inner world is better in every way than the outer. The climate is more uniform and temperate. The electrical conditions of the atmosphere more conducive to longevity and health, and the struggle for existence far less than with us. Here are some of the arguments in favor of a hollow globe, which the so-called wise men have ignored. The uniform migration of herrings to the south. Whence come they, if not from the interior of the earth, for they are never known to return? The assumption is that in search of their food supplies they constantly advance against an opposing current, which takes them through the earth, from pole to pole. "Arctic explorers have observed in the long night of the polar regions that the north star rises to the zenith at a certain latitude, and then declines over the stern of their vessels as they advance further northward, which is directly in contradiction to what it should do, had they not already reached the verge and begun to pass inward toward the interior. This in itself should be a convincing fact. The Aurora Borealis has never been explained satisfactorily, but you and I know its meaning. Strange plants and birds unknown to our world have from time to time been found upon our most northern shores. As I have already told you, the reindeer of Spitzbergen are marked by the hand of man, but what man no one knows, as the island is uninhabited, and as they could not have come from the south, they must have crossed the ice from some undiscovered country to the north.