From somewhere on their extreme right, discernible with the naked eye, came a faint glow like a phosphorescence; going to the glasses it was seen to be a ray of light from some distant star, seen on some floating stratum of dense ether, the star itself unseen in the infinity of space. Probably for millions of years the ray had been travelling at a velocity of nearly 187,000 miles per second, and they could see it far ahead travelling towards them, the light falling on the denser strata of ether in its path in a broad, straight ray. Adjusting their movements they drew nearer and nearer to this ray till they met and entered it, when they saw strange things—scenes that were travelling on the light beams, scenes that happened perhaps millions of years before, when these particular light-beams left their source. It might be the people had now ceased to exist, perhaps the world itself had now no existence, and no place in creation as a world, but the marvellous light-beams were carrying the record of a bygone time, on and on throughout the universe, showing every world that crossed their path, what things had been done at some infinitely remote portion of the infinite universe in the far distant past. Thus was the history of a whole world laid bare, too rapidly for the sight to distinguish details, so the high-speed continuous photographic apparatus was at once set in motion. As they shot into the light-ray, with incalculable speed, it sped past them, and later they found that the lenses of the instruments had given them miles and miles of excellent pictures of the distant world, proving that it had been formed physically like Earth, and that all the various periods of its existence till the formation of man coincided exactly with those of Earth, and as the ship entered into and obstructed the light-beams there came the time when out of the darkness that was on the face of the deep there appeared lurid lights of phosphorescence and exploding gases, which became chemically united to form better and purer air and, eventually, an atmosphere; then land appeared, though the azoic rocks and land were incapable of supporting life and the world was small and deadly. Then followed long periods in which various forms of animal and vegetable life existed, each living its allotted time and dying, its remains resting upon the ground, each epoch in its turn adding to the size of the world and preparing it for the next form of life. First of all came the molluscs, to which the world was principally given over, for these sightless creatures needed no light; then came the fishes, which disturbed and aërated the waters by their movements; then came marine reptiles, and as the land became habitable, though soft, these were followed by every variety of reptiles, and after these had prepared the ground, all forms of animals except man; later came man and all the animals suited to live with him, and as the races of men