the solar disk would present a diameter seventeen times smaller than
that which we admire, and a surface three hundred times less vast. A
dull world indeed! And what an interminable year! The idle people who
are in the habit of being bored must find time even longer upon Uranus
than upon our little Earth, where the days pass so rapidly. And if
matters are arranged there as here, a babe of a year old, beginning to
babble in its nurse's arms, would already have lived as long as an old
man of eighty-four in this world.

But what most seriously complicates the Calendar of the Uranians is the
fact that the four moons which accompany the planet accomplish their
revolution in four different kinds of months, in two, four, eight, and
thirteen days, as is shown in the following table:

Distance from the planet. Time of revolution.
Kilometers. Miles. Days. Hours. Minutes.

1. Ariel 196,000 121,520 2 12 29
2. Umbriel 276,000 171,120 4 3 27
3. Titania 450,000 279,000 8 16 56
4. Oberon 600,000 372,000 13 11 7

The most curious fact is that these satellites do not rotate like those
of the other planets. While the moons of the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn accomplish their revolution from east to west, the satellites of
Uranus rotate in a plane almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, and it is
doubtless the same for the rotation of the planet.

If we had to quit the Earth, and fixate ourselves upon another world,
we should prefer Mars to Uranus, where everything must be so different
from terrestrial arrangements? But who knows? Perhaps, after all, this
planet might afford us some agreeable surprises. _Il ne faut jurer de
rien._

NEPTUNE

And here we reach the frontier of the Solar System, as actually known to
us. In landing on the world of Neptune, which circles through the
Heavens in eternal twilight at a distance of more than four milliard
kilometers (2,480,000,000 miles) from the common center of attraction of
the planetary orbs, we once again admire the prodigies of science.

Uranus was discovered with the telescope, Neptune by calculation. In
addition to the solar influence, the worlds exert a mutual attraction
upon each other that slightly deranges the harmony ordered by the Sun.
The stronger act upon the weaker, and the colossal Jupiter alone causes