SIXTY MILLON YEAES HENCE.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5151, 21 July 1885, Page 2

SIXTY MILLON YEAES HENCE.

Prof. Richard A. Proctor says the moon is the most interesting of all the heavenly bodies. It has been particularly serviceable in the proof it affords of the law of gravitation. It proves, too, what the world has been in remote ages of the past, <md what it will .be in remote ages to come. Its most significant service to man has been as a measurement of time. The t only perceptible effect which the eartb^fl has upon the moon's course is that of attraction, by which its route in space is I slightly deviated. From the moon's.presentcondition we may inform ourselves of the course of all planetary life. There is every reason to suppose that our present codditien was at one time her's ; that she possessed an atmosphere, water, animal and vegetable life. That has now passed away. Her surface is a sterile, rocky mass. The atmosphere has gone or nearly so, and the seas arc dried up. This same process is going on with our earth, and a similar result will eventually ensue, but by reason of' the greater bulk of our planet, effects produced in ten millions of years in tba moon will require sixty millions with, us. —New York Tribune.