THE SATELLITES OF JUPITER.

353

more closely we investigate the huge primary to which theybelong, the more details we discover to reward our zeal. Inthis lecture we have endeavoured to show, that the study ofthe Satellites , although more difficult, and in some respectsless encouraging, is hardly less instructive or important. If anew and more accurate set of tables of their places than we atpresent possess can ere long be constructed, and if instrumentsof the greatest possible power be applied to their observation,we think it probable that many matters connected both withthem and with Jupiter itself, which we as yet regret ourinability to explain, may be found to be full of information.The facts which now puzzle us may he the very facts whichwill teach us what the physical condition of the planet reallyis, or what mutual good offices Jupiter and its Satellitesperform for one another.

"We may some day be able to discuss upon much bettergrounds than at present the possibility, or otherwise, of thehypothesis, that they may be worlds peopled by inhabitantswho may look upon Jupiter as a Sun with four attendantplanets, rather than as a planet with four attendant Satellitesjourneying round a far-distant Sun.

23