Coming to the question of life upon the asteroids, it seems clear that they must be excluded from the list of habitable worlds, whatever we may choose to think of the possible habitability of the original planet through whose destruction they may have come into existence.  The largest of them possesses a force of gravity far too slight to enable it to retain any of the gases or vapors that are recognized as constituting an atmosphere.  But they afford a captivating field for speculation, which need not be altogether avoided, for it offers some graphic illustrations of the law of gravitation.  A few years ago I wrote, for the entertainment of an audience which preferred to meet science attired in a garb woven largely from the strands of fancy, an account of some of the peculiarities of such minute globes as the asteroids, which I reproduce here because it gives, perhaps, a livelier picture of those little bodies, from the point of view of ordinary human interest, than could be presented in any other way.

A WAIF OF SPACE

One night as I was waiting, watch in hand, for an occultation, and striving hard to keep awake, for it had been a hot and exhausting summer’s day, while my wife—­we were then in our honeymoon—­sat sympathetically by my side, I suddenly found myself withdrawn from the telescope, and standing in a place that appeared entirely strange.  It was a very smooth bit of ground, and, to my surprise, there was no horizon in sight; that is to say, the surface of the ground disappeared on all sides at a short distance off, and beyond nothing but sky was visible.  I thought I must be on the top of a stupendous mountain, and yet I was puzzled to understand how the face of the earth could be so far withdrawn.  Presently I became aware that there was some one by me whom I could not see.

“You are not on a mountain,” my companion said, and as he spoke a cold shiver ran along my back-bone; “you are on an asteroid, one of those miniature planets, as you astronomers call them, and of which you have discovered several hundred revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  This is the little globe that you have glimpsed occasionally with your telescope, and that you, or some of your fellows, have been kind enough to name Menippe.”

Then I perceived that my companion, whose address had hardly been reassuring, was a gigantic inhabitant of the little planet, towering up to a height of three quarters of a mile.  For a moment I was highly amused, standing by his foot, which swelled up like a hill, and straining my neck backward to get a look up along the precipice of his leg, which, curiously enough, I observed was clothed in rough homespun, the woolly knots of the cloth appearing of tremendous size, while it bagged at the knee like any terrestrial trousers’ leg.  His great head and face I could see far above me, as it were, in the clouds.  Yet I was not at all astonished.