"Have you never heard of the principle of compensation?
Listen to another calculation.

Had the Earth been dragged along with the comet, it has been calculated that at her perihelion, or nearest point to the Sun, she would have to endure a heat 28,000 times greater than our mean summer temperature.

But this heat, fully capable of turning the rocks into glass and the oceans into vapor, before proceeding to such extremity, must have first formed a thick interposing ring of clouds, and thus considerably modified the excessive temperature.

Therefore, between the extreme cold of the aphelion and the excessive heat of the perihelion, by the great law of compensation, it is probable that the mean temperature would be tolerably endurable." "At how many degrees is the temperature of the interplanetary space estimated ?" asked M'Nicholl.
"Some time ago," replied Barbican, "this temperature was considered to be very low indeed--millions and millions of degrees below zero.

But Fourrier of Auxerre, a distinguished member of the _Academie des Sciences_, whose _Memoires_ on the temperature of the Planetary spaces appeared about 1827, reduced these figures to considerably diminished proportions.