provided against, while the apparatus gave us an immense power over nature.
I admired the ether car, as we called it, and felt inclined to join once more in a great expedition into space beyond the earth's orbit, and into the vast outer regions of the giant planets.
I returned from Saldonio to our city, calling, as I went on, at most of the great cities on the way, and studying, in their museums, both of the things which might relate to earth and also to my coming voyage. I talked with the wisest sages of many lands on our project, and on the things we might hope to see, and what should be the special points of our researches. I found the general opinion was that life was universal in the solar system, except in some few of the smaller worlds (like the moon) on which it had existed, but had passed away, or which were, as yet, not enough developed to receive it. The idea was that, as in the spectroscope we had seen that the elements of the solar system were everywhere the same as on our world, probably derived from the sun—and, as on your earth, only the same metals and gases were proved to exist as we had—so also, in life, that the same types of life were everywhere existent, only developed more in
