Again, does not the author of the “Principles of Terrestrial Physics” prove too much? He admits that 3,000 years ago the climate of England was tropical: he does not deny that a subsequent period of intense cold intervened, 2,550 years ago. He admits historical records, and 2,350 years ago Pythagoras constructed his cosmography of the world, which has never been seriously impugned; and yet he has no suspicion that countries so near to his own had changed their climates first from tropical to glacial, and back again to a temperate zone. It is not reasonable to believe this parable. The school of philosophy generally considered to be the most advanced in modern science has yet another view of cosmogony, of which we venture to give a brief outline. Space is infinite, says the exponent of this system,[9] for wherever in imagination we erect a boundary, we are compelled to think of space as existing beyond it. The starry heavens proclaim that it is not entirely void; but the question remains, are the vast regions which surround the stars, and across which light is propagated, absolutely empty? No. Modern science, while it rejects the notion of the luminiferous particles of the old philosophy, has cogent proofs of the existence of a luminiferous ether with definite mechanical properties. It is infinitely more attenuated, but more solid than gas. It resembles jelly rather than air, and if not co-extensive with space, it extends as far as the most distant star the telescope reveals to us; it is the vehicle of their light in fact; it takes up their molecular tremors and conveys them with inconceivable rapidity to our organs of vision. The splendour of the firmament at night is due to this vibration. If this ether has a boundary, masses of ponderable matter may exist beyond it, but they could emit no light. Dark suns may burn there, metals may be heated to fusion in invisible furnaces, planets may be molten amid intense darkness; for the loss of heat being simply the abstraction of molecular motion by the ether, where this medium is absent no cooling could take place. [9] Professor Tyndall in _Fortnightly Review_.