TELESCOPES. A. Fowler 238 METEORS. Sir Robert S. Ball 266 COMETS. Sir John Herschel 282 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS. J. E. Gore 307 THE SUN—WHAT WE LEARN FROM IT. Richard A. Proctor 316 MERCURY. William F. Denning 353 THE PLANET VENUS. Camille Flammarion 358 THE EARTH AS A PLANET. Élisée Réclus 364 THE MOON. Thomas Gwyn Elger 376 MARS. Agnes M. Clerke 385 THE PLANETOIDS. Camille Flammarion 396 JUPITER. Agnes M. Clerke 403 SATURN. Agnes M. Clerke 415 URANUS AND NEPTUNE. William F. Denning 426 THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE THE HEAVENS.—AMÉDÉE GUILLEMIN What are the heavens? Where the shores of that limitless ocean; where the bottom of that unfathomable abyss? What are those brilliant points—those innumerable stars, which, never dim, shine out unceasingly from the dark profound? Are they sown broadcast—orderless, with no other bond save that which perspective lends to them? Or, if not immovable, as we have so long imagined, if not golden nails fixed to a crystal vault, whither are they bound? And, finally, what are the parts assigned to the sun, our earth, and all the earths attendant on the glorious orb of day in this tremendous concert of celestial spheres—this sublime harmony of the universe? These are magnificent problems of which the most fertile imagination would have in vain attempted the solution, if, for the greater glory of the human mind, astronomy—first born of the sciences—had not at length come to our aid. How wonderful is the power of man! Chained down to the surface of the earth, an intelligent atom on a grain of sand lost in the immensity of a space, he invents instruments which multiply a thousand-fold his vision, he sounds the depths of the ether, gauges the visible universe, and counts the myriads of stars which people it; next, studying their most complicated movements, he measures exactly their dimensions and the distances of the nearest of them from the earth, and next deduces their masses; then, discovering in the seeming disorder of the stellar groupings real bonds of union, he at last evolves order from apparent confusion. Nor is this all. Rising by a supreme flight of thought to the most abstract speculations, he discovers the laws which regulate all celestial movements, and defines the nature of the universal force which sustains the worlds.