At the time of that memorable1 meeting in honour of Michel Ardan—so appropriately mentioned by the orator—if J. T. Maston had excitedly exclaimed, “Let us right the Earth’s axis2,” it was because the daring and fantastical Frenchman, one of the heroes of the Moon Voyage, had chanted his dithyrambic hymn3 in honour of the most important planets of our solar system. In his superb panegyric4 he had celebrated5 the special advantages of the giant planet, as we briefly6 reported at the time.
The problem solved by the calculator of the Gun Club was the substitution of a new axis of rotation7 for the old one on which the Earth had turned ever since in popular phrase, “the world was a world.” This new axis of rotation would be perpendicular8 to the plane of its orbit; and under such conditions the climatal situation of the old Pole would be much the same as that of Trondhjem, in Norway, in spring-time. The palæocrystic armour9 would thus naturally melt under the rays of the Sun; and at the same time climate would be distributed over the Earth as the climates are distributed in Jupiter.
The inclination10 of our planet’s axis, or in other terms, the angle which its axis of rotation makes with the plane of its ecliptic is 66° 32′. A few degrees would thus bring the axis perpendicular to the plane of the orbit it describes round the Sun.
But—it is important to remark—the effort that the North Polar Practical Association was about to make would not, strictly11 speaking, right the Earth’s axis. Mechanically, no force, however considerable, could accomplish that. The Earth is not like a chicken on a spit, that we can take it in our hand and shift it as we will. But the making of a new axis was possible—it may be said easy—if the engineers only had the fulcrum12 dreamt of by Archimedes and the lever imagined by J. T. Maston.
But as it had been decided13 to keep the invention a secret until further orders, all that could be done was to study the consequences. And to begin with, the journals and reviews of all sorts appealing to the learned and the ignorant devoted14 themselves to considering how Jupiter was affected15 by the approximate perpendicularity16 of his axis to the plane of his orbit.
Jupiter, like Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Saturn17, Uranus18, and Neptune19, forms part of the solar system, and sweeps round at nearly five hundred million miles from the central fire; and his volume is about fourteen times that of the Earth.
If there be such a thing as Jovian life, that is to say, if there are any inhabitants on Jupiter, the following are the advantages they obtain by living on the great planet—advantages so poetically20 brought into relief at the memorable meeting above alluded21 to.
In the first place, during the diurnal22 rotation of Jupiter, which occupies nine hours, fifty-five minutes, the days are always equal to the nights in all latitudes24; that is to say, the Jovian day is four hours, fifty-seven minutes long, and the Jovian night lasts also four hours and fifty-seven minutes.
“There,” said the admirers of Jovian existence, “you have something suited to people of regular habits. They will be delighted to submit to such regularity25.”
That is what would happen to the Earth if Barbicane did what he promised, only as the new axis would make no difference in the time of rotation, twenty-four hours would still separate the successive noons, and our spheroid would be blessed with nights and days each twelve hours long, and we should live in a perpetual equinox.
“But the climatal
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