The temperature on Venus is not so high as to prevent a luxuriant vegetation. The constantly uniform climatic conditions which exist everywhere result in an entire absence of adaptation to changing exterior conditions. Only low forms of life are therefore represented, mostly no doubt belonging to the vegetable kingdom; and the organisms are nearly of the same kind all over the planet. The vegetative processes are greatly accelerated by the high temperature. Therefore, the lifetime of the organisms is probably short. Their dead bodies, decaying rapidly, if lying in the open air, fill it with stifling gases; if embedded in the slime carried down by the rivers, they speedily turn into small lumps of coal, which, later, under the pressure of new layers combined with high temperature, become particles of graphite. Fossils proper are not formed as was also the case in the early periods of the Earth.
The temperature at the poles of Venus is probably somewhat lower, perhaps about 10° C. (18° F.) than the average temperature on the planet. The organisms there should have developed into higher forms than elsewhere, and progress and culture, if we may so express it, will gradually spread from the poles toward the equator. Later, the temperature will sink, the dense clouds and the gloom disperse, and some time, perhaps not before life on the Earth has reverted to its simpler forms or has even become extinct, a flora and a fauna will appear, similar in kind to those that now delight our human eye, and Venus will then indeed be the “Heavenly Queen” of Babylonian fame, not because of her radiant lustre alone, but as the dwelling place of the highest beings in our solar system.
The ancients believed that the fates of men could be read in the stars and this faith persisted with the power of a religion until a few centuries ago. It was shared by the foremost astronomers, pre-eminently by Tycho Brahe, who endeavoured to support it through his investigations. Traces are yet to be found in popular conceptions. These ideas have been verified today in a certain sense although with a wholly different meaning than held by our forefathers. The planets do tell us the conditions that existed on the Earth at the first dawn of life and we can also draw from them a prediction of the fate that once, after milliards of years perhaps, will befall the latter descendants of present generations.