Mr Proctor’s Lecture.

Patea Mail, 13 November 1880, Page 3

Mr Proctor’s Lecture.

A large audience assembled at the Wanganui theatre on Thursday evening, to hear Mr Proctor’s first lecture, his subject being “ the life and death of a world.” the world’s beginning. Speculating on the origin of a planet, ho said if it wore admitted that planets are at first masses of gaseous vapour, they would be noticeable on account of their brightness, and the intensity of the heat emitted. It must be understood that the vapour consisted of metals—iron, gold, copper, soldimn, &c., reduced to gases by fervency of heat. By cooling, these vapours would gradually become liquid, and in course of time solid, but they would remain at a white heat for an enormous period. Water could not remain on a body in such a state, but would ascend in heavy clouds, throus'li which the surface of the globe would bo invisible. The globe while in (his stage would look much larger than it really is, and if it were weighed it would be very light in proportion to its size. By the continued cooling, the waters would gradually descend and form seas. Snow would form on the mountains, and glaciers would carry down the soil to the bod of the sea, causing continents to come into existence. The world then became fit to sustain life. GLACIERS AND CONTINENTS. The soil brought down by glaciers formed strata, in which wore found animals, and the geologist was enabled, by carefully comparing the different fossils in the strata of various countries, to note the rate at which these changes progressed, and compute the period of time which has elapsed since they commenced. He would not say what that period was, but the geological evidence was conclusive that many millions of years must have passed since the world took solid shape. middle age and decay. The earth is at present in middle ago. After this will come the period of decadence ; and how was a planet in this condition to bo recognised ? Within the last thirty years four eminent geologists had come to the conclusion that, as the earth aged, the seas would gradually dry up, the internal tires would slowly be extinguished, and the crust of the earth would become broken and porous like pumice stone. The waters would be absorbed, and, though the earth would still continue circling round the sun, life would be impossible. If the solar system was surveyed, many planets could bo seen in all these stages of existence. OTHER WORLDS. Having sketched the history of a planet, Mr Proctor showed diagrams of the sun as being in the full blaze of youth, Jupiter and Saturn with their envelope of clouds showing a more advanced stage of life, Mars with seas slowly dring up as evidence of decay, and the moon with its barren airless wastes showing advanced decay. There are millions of inhabited worlds, said Mr Proctor, but of their inhabitants he knew nothing and could only speculate. Jupiter and Mars, the giant planets in our system, will yet take up the. song of life, as older worlds had done. The lecture was much applauded.