THE FIXED STARS. 



53 



with automatic and periodical precision. I know of no domestic ani- 

 mal that can not be trained to look out for these agents when the 

 training is conducted with skill and with determination. Like young 

 children, and those persons of later life who have never tasted the 

 agents in any form, nor experienced the sensations which come from 

 them, the lower animals reject them at first, strive against them, and 

 evidently are much disquieted and perplexed by the results which fol- 

 low their use. But to err is inhuman as well as human, and so the 

 beasts that perish, even they err and learn to like it. In the beast as 

 in the man, the train of events follows the same course. The craving 

 becomes connected almost immediately with deterioration, and at last 

 the two conditions of desire and decay are spun into the same woof, 

 and appear as the same substance. Contemporary Review. 



THE BRIGHTNESS AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE 



EIXED STARS. 



By HENEY FAEQUHAE. 



THOSE who view and admire the starry canopy above us so fitting- 

 ly associated, in the oft-quoted language of a great philosopher, 

 with the moral nature of man can hardly fail to remark how largely 

 their pleasure in the grand prospect is due to the endless variety in its 

 brilliancy. Just as the magnificence of mundane potentates is fully 

 brought out only by the presence of a long train of inferiors more 

 modestly arrayed, so Sirius and Capella would be less splendid had 

 they not a multitude of lesser luminaries to heighten their glory by 

 contrast. And how many hundreds of twinkling points, almost lost 

 in the wide abyss, are there for every star of highest rank ! In the 

 proportion of common soldiers to captains, and of captains to corps 

 commanders, this silent host of heaven is not unlike the less stately 

 armies that tread earth instead of ether. And if astronomers have 

 hitherto interested themselves less in questions of precedence and 

 seniority than in the particular spot on the field occupied by each 

 individual in the great array when drawn up for review ; if, dropping 

 the figure, differences of luster and the number of stars of the various 

 grades have occupied less of their attention than the comparatively 

 dry details of right-ascension and declination, with all the refinements 

 of precession, nutation, aberration, proper motion, parallax, refraction, 

 etc., affecting these they are now making some amends for their 

 neglect. The methodical study of stellar brightness belongs almost 

 entirely, however, to the present century, Sir W. Herschel's first paper 

 calling attention to the importance of the subject having appeared in 



