"The sun won't be extinguished," answered the doctor; "but even if it should be, the temperature would not fall any lower, probably, than what I have mentioned."
"That's strange."
"O, I know it used to be said that in the space outside of the atmosphere the temperature was thousands of degrees below zero! but since the experiments of the Frenchman Fourrier, this has been disproved; he has shown that if the earth were placed in a medium void of all heat, that the temperature at the pole would be much greater, and that there would be very great differences between night and day; so, my friends, it is no colder a few millions of miles from the earth than it is here."
"Tell me, Doctor," said Altamont, "is not the temperature of America lower than that of other countries of the world?"
"Without doubt; but don't be proud of it," answered the doctor with a laugh.
"And what is the reason?"
"No very satisfactory explanation has ever been given; so it occurred to Hadley[*] that a comet had come into collision with the earth and had altered the position of its axis of rotation, that is to say, of its poles; according to him, the North Pole, which used to be situated at Hudson's Bay, found itself carried farther east, and the land at the old Pole preserved a greater cold, which long centuries of the sun have not yet heated."
"And you do not admit this hypothesis?"
"Not for a moment; for what is true of the eastern coast of America is not true of the western coast, which has a higher temperature. No! we can prove that the isothermal lines differ from the terrestrial parallels, and that is all."