316 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



very small space when we think of them in terms of the stars, all of 

 which are other suns. Dr. Simon Newcomb has given us in his 

 astronomy for everybody, the very best comparison ever made to 

 show us how small we are. He says that if along the Atlantic coast 

 we should make a model of our solar system, we might put an 

 apple down in a field to represent the sun, then our earth would be 

 represented by a mustard seed 40 feet away revolving around the 

 apple, and Neptune could be represented as a small pea circling 

 around the apple at a distance of one-fourth mile, thus our whole 

 solar system could be shown in a field one-half mile square if we 

 did not include the comets; but to find the nearest star which is 

 a sun only four and one-half light years away from us, we should 

 have to travel from this field on the Atlantic Coast across the 

 whole of North America to California, and then go on a ship out 

 into the Pacific Ocean before we could reach our nearest star 

 neighbor which would be another sun like our own and represent- 

 ed by another apple. 



The Moon Came Down to Earth 



E. B. Whiting 

 Branford, Conn. 



Where is there a man who has not cried for the moon at some 

 point in his career? More favored than so many of my fellow 

 mortals, during an afternoon stroll in the woods, I came upon 

 the fallen moon, spots and all. I brought it home and took its 

 picture side by side with our full sized cat and again upon the 

 lawn between two children. The moon measured twenty-eight 

 inches around its shortest circumference and thirty-one inches 

 around its longest. 



Then we ate it. Green cheese? No, sir! Better than that. 

 Cut in sweet smelling steaks an inch and a half thick, it made the 

 backbone of several meals and had the best canned mushrooms 

 beaten to a distinct frazzle. 



