Uranus, at the other extremity of the system, receives four hundred times less heat and light than we do, consequently neither water nor any thing else can exist there in a liquid state; what is fluid on our earth must be frozen up into a solid mass.

Good, I declare my brother has fallen asleep!" "It is very--interesting--however," said Willis, making ineffectual efforts to smother a yawn.
"The same difficulty with comets; there must have been some very urgent necessity for human beings in order to have peopled them.

When they pass the perihelion--" "The what ?" inquired Willis.
"The point where they approach nearest the sun--when they pass the perihelion, I was going to say, the heat they endure must be terrific; when on the other hand, at their extreme distance from that body, the cold must be intense.

The comet of 1680 did not approach within five thousand _myriametres_ of the sun." "Friends coming within that distance of each other should at least shake hands," said Willis.
"Still, even at that distance, the heat, according to Newton, must be like red-hot iron, and if constituted like our earth, when heated to that degree, must take fifty thousand years to cool." "Fifty thousand years!" said Willis, yawning from ear to ear.
"The central position between these extremes, which would either congeal our earth into a mass of ice or burn it up into a heap of cinders, is therefore the most congenial to such beings as ourselves.
Whence I conclude--" Here the crimson flashes of Willis's pipe, which had been gradually diminishing in brilliance suddenly ceased; _contralto_ notes issued from the profundities of his breast, and it became evident to the orator that all his audience were sound asleep.
"Whence I conclude," said Fritz, addressing himself, "that my orations must be somewhat soporiferous." Being thus left alone to keep a look-out on shore, his thoughts gradually receded within his own breast, where all was rose-colored and smiling, for at his age rust has not had time to corrupt, nor moths to eat away.

And it was not long before he himself, like his two companions, was fast locked in the arms of sleep.
How long this state of things lasted the chronicle saith not; but the three sleepers were eventually awakened by a simultaneous howl of the dogs.