One may well envy those who have had the good fortune to behold this spectacle--to actually see, as it were, the air that the inhabitants of another world are breathing and making resonant with all the multitudinous sounds and voices that accompany intelligent life.

But perhaps some readers will prefer to think that even though an atmosphere is there, there is no one to breathe it.
[Illustration: VENUS'S ATMOSPHERE SEEN AS A RING OF LIGHT.] As the visibility of Venus's atmosphere is unparalleled elsewhere in the solar system, it may be worth while to give a graphic illustration of it.

In the accompanying figure the planet is represented at three successive points in its advance toward inferior conjunction.

As it approaches conjunction it slowly draws nearer the earth, and its apparent diameter consequently increases.

At _A_ a large part of the luminous crescent is composed of the planet's surface reflecting the sunshine; at _B_ the ratio of the reflecting surface to the illuminated atmosphere has diminished, and the latter has extended, like the curved arms of a pair of calipers, far around the unilluminated side of the disk; at _C_ the atmosphere is illuminated all around by the sunlight coming through it from behind, while the surface of the planet has passed entirely out of the light--that is to say, Venus has become an invisible globe embraced by a circle of refracted sunshine.
We return to the question of life.