Undoubted sidering the limited amount of labor and capi- | This evil will cure itself in time. tal expended in working them. The "Diana" ly there will be heavy losses in individual cases; is down 118 feet by perpendicular shaft, with but I am fully satisfied there will be a large an incline of 40 feet below. It now averages average of success where capital is judiciously in antimonial ores and sulphurets $200 to the invested, and mills and mines economically ton. A new engine of 30 horse-power has been managed. erected upon it. The "Morgan and Munsey" runs parallel with the Diana at a distance of 150 feet, and is considered one of the best ledges in Lander Hill. This mine is down 250 feet by incline, has a 3 feet vein, and has yielded over two hundred thousand dollars. The Savage, Oregon, North Star, and Southern Light are all splendid ledges, yielding the richest class of ores. The General Hooker, St. Louis, Governor Seymour, and Washington Irving are in active operation with excellent results. The Hubbard, a rich ledge in Central Hill, near Upper Austin, has not only paid for the labor and capital expended upon it, but within a few months returned, in clear profit, the snug little sum of $19,000 to the owners. The Eagle Mill and its mining property is paying handsomely. After nearly three months of hard experience, during which I scarcely passed a day without exploring one or more of the mines, I am thoroughly convinced this is the richest of our mineral regions. Whether all the mining enterprises now in progress will pay is another question. I think Eastern people are too easily imposed upon by specious representations, and have too great a tendency to expend large sums of money in the erection of mills and offices before they fully develop their ledges. Senator Stewart, on his way back from the States last summer, took occasion, in the course of a speech at Austin, to dwell upon the great advantages that would be derived from the speedy construction of the Pacific Railroad. There was only one part of the honorable Senator's speech to which any of his auditors could take exception; and, as I happen to be specially interested in that, I will mention it. Mr. Stewart said the people of the East had no idea of Nevada except what they derived from certain caricatures in Harper's Magazine. Every body read Harper's, and, as a matter of course, every body thought the mines were a humbug; the miners a race of savages, armed to the teeth with pistols and bowie-knives; and the climate so boisterous that it was necessary to cling to awning-posts to keep from being blown away! Now, Mr. Stewart knows very well Virginia City is not Nevada; but it was a good point to make before an audience of his constituents. He intimated that if the writer would be serious for once in his life, and devote his pen to the true interests of the country, he could do as much through the pages of Harper toward the building of the Pacific Railroad as any man living. Mr. Stewart will admit that there is a reformation in the present article, which, it is hoped, will be found serious enough. A CHATTANOOGA. KINDLING impulse seized the host So master-riders fling the rein But you must know your men. On yestermorn, in grayish mist, Armies, like ghosts, on hills had fought; The summit-cannon plunge their flame Nor fire a shot. Such men appall The foe, though brave. He from the brink He sees them creep. Yet, here and there, So dwindle these to eyes below. Sliver and rive the inwoven ways; From right to left, from left to right What color-bearer, with colors clear Heaps slowly to a hump. Near and more near; till now the flags A1 "ARE THERE OTHER INHABITED WORLDS ?”* RE there on any of these globes which will soon be seen in his neighborhood. It is seem to be moving around us beings the analogue of the larger condensation of formed like ourselves, or animals, or any vapor that would be produced were one of us plants? Do people on the Moon contemplate to breathe on the same window. The fly is our Earth, a glorious orb in their firmament, burning away and vaporizing water with the and spy out our actions through telescopes as superfluous heat. we attempt to spy out theirs? Before the evening is finished I hope to be able to answer these questions in a satisfactory manner. To illustrate the necessity of air to the wellbeing of animals, a bird may be put under a glass bell jar standing on the air-pump. By the aid of the pump the air can be removed to a large extent from the bell jar, and as soon as the exhaustion is commenced, the bird shows signs of discomfort and becomes more and more restless as the action continues. would eventually die if kept under the exhaust Let us examine, in the first place, the conditions essential to the existence of the organized beings with which we are familiar, and then we will try to discover whether such conditions are found on any other celestial body. It will only be necessary to investigate a few of these conditions, because if we find any that are abso-ed jar. lutely essential to life, whether animal or vegetable, missing on other globes, our purpose will be fulfilled. They can not be inhabited. Не To plants air is just as necessary as to animals, although we can not easily demonstrate this by a lecture-table experiment. The larger part of their substance is derived from the atmosphere by the aid of the Sun's beams; but a small portion comes in through the roots. Nature has so arranged the relations of plants to animals that they take out from the air the impurities that have been imparted to it by animals and replace the ingredients that are necessary to the latter. If in any planet we could detect the traces of vegetable life, it would at once be a strong argument for the existence of animals there, and vice versa. To sustain the life of an animal three things are necessary. It must have air, water, and food. Why is this the case? We all know how soon life is extinguished if the supply of air to the lungs be cut off; the person turns of a livid blue, becomes insensible, and soon dies. Or by breathing the noxious gas that arises from the burning of charcoal the same result occurs. One of the elements of the air, a fifth part of its bulk, is a gas-oxygen. It possesses the power of sustaining the operation of burning. In a stove, for example, if we desire the burning to be accelerated, we in-case of aquatic animals and water plants altocrease the draught and let in more air-that is, more oxygen; if we desire to reduce the rate of combustion, we diminish the access of air. If we shut off the supply of air altogether the fire goes out. So it is in a human being. A burning is continually going on in him, and this it is that enables him to keep warm in spite of the cold of winter or of the night season. No animal can possibly exist without a supply of air to carry on combustion in its body. When we are about to die, and our interior production of heat is ceasing, we grow cold. That air is essential to the life of even the lowest animals is shown by the fact that, if water be taken in which animalcula are swimming, and cold applied so as to cause it to freeze, a drop remains unfrozen around each of these little animated forms for a certain time after the rest has congealed. Heat is being produced by the animal-to liberate that heat it must be consuming air and burning its body. Again, in an instance with which many of us are familiar, the respiration of a small animal is shown. If on a cold day you watch a fly that has lighted on a dry window, a collection of moisture, the results of his respiration, A Lecture delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association of New York by HENRY DRAPER, M.D., Professor Adjunct of Chemistry in the University of New York. But you may think that I have omitted the gether. They seem to have no access to air, and might be fairly supposed not to require it. You will sustain yourselves in that opinion by citing the case of a man submerged in water who drowns, and by that of a fish brought out into the air that dies. Nevertheless air is necessary to all fishes; for if you boil water and so expel the air from it, and then when cool put a fish into it, he can not live. He is in the same condition as the bird in the bell jar. The other case, that of a fish dying in the air, is as readily explained. A fish is not provided with lungs as we are, but breathes the air dissolved in water by the aid of its gills. When taken out of water the gills dry up, and the little tufts of blood-vessels, of which they consist, adhere to one another so as to be unable to act any longer. Some fish, as the eel, have, however, the means of keeping their gills wet by causing the mouth to remain partly filled with water, and these can be retained on land for many hours and yet live. Water in its turn is just as essential as air. By its aid food is carried into the body and distributed, and it also acts as a regulator of heat. If we tend to become too warm, as in the summer season, water escapes rapidly from the lungs and skin, and by its evaporation keeps us cool. That such evaporating processes cause a cooling may be proved by an experiment with which many of us are acquainted. It is often desired, when in the woods, to ascertain the di- | Around the Sun, a sphere 880,000 miles in rection from which the wind is blowing. We diameter, there revolve a number of globes; may need it as a guide. There may not be sufficient air stirring to drift away a light object like a straw. Under these circumstances foresters, having wetted the finger, hold it upward at arm's-length. A gentle breeze causes the moisture to evaporate more rapidly on the side it first strikes, and the direction is at once indicated by the coldness of that side. So also in the case of the porous earthen-ware vessels used in southern climates for keeping water cool. The fluid that soaks through the earthen-ware, evaporating from the outside, keeps the temperature of the water much below that of the surrounding air. Lastly, as regards food but little requires to be said. All know from hard experience how necessary it is. If we do not eat we soon become emaciated and die after a short interval. What is the cause of this wasting away, and why can we not resist it by the will? We have already learned that air is essential to our well-being, because we must have a burning continually going on in the body. But we must also have a fuel to burn, and this fuel is either the food or portions of the body that have been made out of it. If we do not eat and resupply the parts that are consumed our weight becomes daily less and less, as we see in wasting fevers, until, when a certain point is attained, we die of cold. The food we require is produced by plants, the remark applying even to meat, which has been extracted from plants by oxen, sheep, etc. That it is combustible can be proved by experiment. A piece of meat or bread, if placed in the fire, burns away, leaving only a little ash; the mass of it having united with oxygen and disappeared in a gaseous form. The same would have happened had it been eaten, though the burning would have been slower and without flame. some, the more important, called planets; some the moons or satellites of these planets; and the rest asteroids, or else, if very small, aerolites or meteors. The planets are, of course, the bodies most likely to prove interesting to us, and they may therefore be profitably enumerated. The nearest to the Sun is Mercury, 37 millions of miles distant; next comes Venus, 68 millions of miles distant; then the Earth, 95 millions of miles. Outside of us, or farther from the Sun, are Mars, 142 millions of miles from that luminary; Jupiter, 485 millions; Saturn, 900 millions; Uranus, 1800 millions; and Neptune, 3000 millions. An idea of the comparative size of these bodies and their distances from the Sun may be gained from a table constructed by Sir John Herschel : The Sun, a globe two feet in diameter. fifth mile. Uranus, a cherry, diameter of orbit a mile and a half. If we can succeed in rendering it probable that on any of these bodies there is life, we shall be led at once to extend the sphere of animated nature infinitely. For we know that each of the countless multitudes of fixed stars, which delight our gaze on a clear evening, is a sun, shining, as our sun does, by virtue of its own light. At distances vastly greater than these are collections of stars, which, though they may in reality be separated as far from one another as the nearest fixed star is from us, yet seem to be closely packed together. These, the resolvable nebulæ, are stellar systems of prodigious extent. Many are not bright enough to affect the naked eye; and who shall say what immense numbers there may be invisible even with the telescope? We may argue from analogy that all these suns, many of them larger than ours, are surrounded by trains of planets, revolving around them at various distances. If on any of the planets of our solar system life can be maintained, why not on those planets too? And does it not seem reasonable to suppose that all those bodies have been created for some other purpose than merely occasionally to illuminate our skies? Is this little speck in the universe It is the combustibility of stimulants, such as whisky and brandy, that renders them valuable in low fevers. Nowadays the treatment in such cases is to give the patient as much liquor as he can bear without becoming intoxicated; it burns away within him to produce the animal heat he requires, and so saves him to a certain extent from the emaciation that would be produced by the burning of his body. For the healthful performance of the functions of the system a temperature of nearly 100 degrees must be maintained by man; if he becomes much cooler than this he will die of cold. The sensation of cold piercing to the very marrow of the bones, so keenly felt by those as-where we are existing, and which is visible to cending high mountains, is due to the attenuated state of the air in such localities; not enough can be taken in by the lungs at each breath to keep the body burning at a proper rate. We are now ready to glance for a few moments at the construction of the solar system. only two or three of its immediate neighbors, the only seat of life? "Each of these stars is a religious house; I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise, |