42 To the River Plate and Back 



the suspicion arises that it may be a moving body, 

 its orbit traceable upon the background of the ap- 

 parently motionless fixed stars; and when it is found 

 after successive exposures to have changed its relative 

 position from night to night and week to week, it is 

 finally announced to be an asteroid, or the satellite of 

 one of the larger planets, as the case may be. There 

 is then proper joy in the astronomical world, the news- 

 papers herald the discovery in large head-lines, the 

 lucky finder is made a Doctor of Science, and has his 

 name enrolled among the immortals. The negatives 

 meanwhile are stored away in the vault of the obser- 

 vatory, and common men go on toiling and moiling as 

 before. It has been my pleasure to be personally 

 acquainted with a great many of the leading astrono- 

 mers of the past and present generation on both sides 

 of the Atlantic. With some of them I have been 

 intimately associated, and I have learned to entertain 

 for them and their work the highest admiration. 

 No study is more elevating and inspiring than astron- 

 omy. It may, however, be questioned whether, viewed 

 from the utilitarian standpoint, the results which are 

 being achieved by it are as valuable to mankind as those 

 which are being achieved in some other branches of re- 

 search. In proportion to the large expense which is 

 necessary in order to add a little to our knowledge of 

 the distant universe what may be learned seems to be of 

 less importance to humanity than the knowledge which 

 remains to be secured nearer at hand by the physicist, 

 the chemist, the geologist, the botanist, and the zoologist. 

 But it is eight bells and time to turn in! 



