"'I know what your feelings are,' said the Genius; 'you want analogies,
and all the elements of knowledge to comprehend the scene before you.
You are in the same state in which a fly would be whose microscopic eye
was changed for one similar to that of man, and you are wholly unable to
associate what you now see with your former knowledge. But those beings
who are before you, and who appear to you almost as imperfect in their
functions as the zoophytes of the polar sea, to which they are not
unlike in their apparent organization to your eyes, have a sphere of
sensibility and intellectual enjoyment far superior to that of the
inhabitants of your earth. Each of those tubes, which appears like the
trunk of an elephant, is an organ of peculiar motion or sensation. They
have many modes of perception of which you are wholly ignorant, at the
same time that their sphere of vision is infinitely more extended than
yours, and their organs of touch far more perfect and exquisite.'"

After descanting upon the advantages of Saturn's position for surveying
some of the phenomena of the solar system and of outer space, and the
consequent immense advances that the Saturnians have made in
astronomical knowledge, the Genius continues:

"'If I were to show you the different parts of the surface of this
planet you would see the marvelous results of the powers possessed by
these highly intellectual beings, and of the wonderful manner in which
they have applied and modified matter. Those columnar masses, which seem
to you as if rising out of a mass of ice below, are results of art, and
processes are going on within them connected with the formation and
perfection of their food. The brilliant-colored fluids are the results
of such operations as on the earth would be performed in your
laboratories, or more properly in your refined culinary apparatus, for
they are connected with their system of nourishment. Those opaque azure
clouds, to which you saw a few minutes ago one of those beings directing
his course, are works of art, and places in which they move through
different regions of their atmosphere, and command the temperature and
the quantity of light most fitted for their philosophical researches,
or most convenient for the purposes of life.'"[11]

[Footnote 11: Davy, of course, was aware that, owing to increase of
distance, the sun would appear to an inhabitant of Saturn with a disk
only one ninetieth as great in area as that which it