Still there are other circumstances that render the
notion of their being inhabited by beings like ourselves exceedingly
improbable. Mercury, for example, is so embarrassed by the solar rays,
that lead must always be in a state of fusion, and water, if not
reduced to a state of vapor, will be hot enough to boil the fish that
are in it. Uranus, at the other extremity of the system, receives four
hundred times less heat and light than we do, consequently neither
water nor any thing else can exist there in a liquid state; what is
fluid on our earth must be frozen up into a solid mass. Good, I
declare my brother has fallen asleep!"
"It is very--interesting--however," said Willis, making ineffectual
efforts to smother a yawn.
"The same difficulty with comets; there must have been some very
urgent necessity for human beings in order to have peopled them. When
they pass the perihelion--"
"The what?" inquired Willis.
"The point where they approach nearest the sun--when they pass the
perihelion, I was going to say, the heat they endure must be terrific;
when on the other hand, at their extreme distance from that body, the
cold must be intense. The comet of 1680 did not approach within five
thousand _myriametres_ of the sun."
"Friends coming within that distance of each other should at least
shake hands," said Willis.
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