The Southern Heavens 35 



though much smaller in extent as seen from our earth, 

 attracted our attention. Detached groups of suns, so 

 far away that they seem to be drawn together and melt 

 into a pale haze in the midnight sky, they teach impres- 

 sively the vastness of that immeasurable domain 

 through which run the unchanging laws of Him who 

 said, "Let there be light.' How infinitely little man 

 appears when we contemplate the heavens in full view 

 of the teachings of modern astronomy. If the Psalmist 

 could say as he gazed at the sun, moon, and stars: 

 'What is man that Thou art mindful of him?' how 

 much more reverent ought we to be as with bared 

 foreheads we look up into the purple vault above 

 us and reflect upon the illimitable distances, the tre- 

 mendous velocities, and the prodigious momenta 

 of the uncounted suns and worlds which are threading 

 the mazes of space! 



Standing under the stars the paleontologist cannot 

 fail to recall that his astronomical brethren in a certain 

 sense are also paleontologists, ' l students of ancient 

 things.' We have been told that some of the light 

 which touches the human retina, as we stand at the 

 eyepiece of a telescope, must have started on its earth- 

 ward journey from the remoter points of the universe 

 millions of years ago. In other words, when we peer 

 through a powerful telescope directed toward the more 

 distant parts of that great complex of which we are 

 ourselves an insignificant portion, we do not see things 

 as they now are, but as they were long ago. Could we 

 behold the Clouds of Magellan exactly as they are at the 

 present instant of time we might discover, because 

 light is so laggard and has so far to come, that changes 

 have occurred of which we as yet have no intimation, 

 and concerning which information will only be received 



