exist fairly proportioned—the solid, the liquid and the gaseous; in the Earth's Moon you say you only found the solid; in the Sun there seems to be only the gaseous; why should we not here expect to find the liquid dominant—a world in which the fluid prevails as with us the solid? Now we can understand the sudden changes we have seen, even in a single night, upon this vast globe—his shifting belts, his spots forming and dissolving in a few hours—the most wondrous example (save the mighty Sun himself) of vast and rapid change in our system; now we can understand his lightness, his comparatively small gravitating power, perhaps even his brilliancy."
"There must be an advantage in this," said Arauniel, "to these huge beings, some of whom seem endowed with intelligence. They are not bound to the surface as men or the Martians are, or near the surface as we; they can traverse their world up and down—down into its inner depths for hundreds of miles."
"On earth," I replied, "they partially feel this advantage of the waters. It is true, man has never yet obtained that sovereignty over the sea that he has over the land. But still the sea is of use to man. It is the great highway of commerce. Upon the sea he carries
