374 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



intelligent persons doubt as regards our knowledge of the 

 distance of the solar orb ; they doubt if assumed knowledge 

 of stellar worlds and distances has any basis of fact to rest 

 upon. The man who did more than any other to awaken 

 respect for astronomical science among husbandmen was not 

 an astronomer, but an almanac-maker. 



If there was anv one individual whose learnins: I regarded 

 with profound respect in my youthful days, it was Robert B. 

 Thomas, that mythical man, who, although declared dead 

 half a century ago, still continues to make almanacs just the 

 same. When he demonstrated fifty years ago, in that useful 

 little annual, the " Old Farmer's Almanac," his ability to 

 prognosticate eclipses, the time of the rise and fall of tides, 

 changes in the moon, and, above all, changes of the weather, 

 without the use of the hateful word " probable," he silenced 

 all cavil, and doubt of the capabilities of science, and com- 

 pelled his readers to believe what they could not comprehend. 



The old almanac magician is still a favorite authority ; but 

 I have to confess that my confidence is shaken in his 

 weather forecasts since I was told by one who represents him 

 ill terrestrial life (who bears a name familiar to this Board of 

 Agriculture) , that he no longer superintends the weather-pre- 

 dictions, but has turned that department over to his wife, 

 whose forecasts are more popular. 



We obtain clearer conceptions of the enormous distance of 

 the central luminary from our earth by a consideration of the 

 time necessary for some bodies with which we are familiar 

 to make the journey. 



If the railway-train which brought us to this city could 

 have gone on at the rate of forty miles an hour, toward the 

 sun, without stops for fuel and water, it would not have 

 reached its destination until the year 224G. The trip would 

 have continueil three hundred and sixty-three years. If a 

 human being could be projected from the muzzle of one of 

 our eighty-ton guns, and fly at the usual speed of modern 

 projectiles, the child born at the instant of the discharge 

 would be nine years old before the voyager reached the solar 

 orb. If we were in telephonic communication with beings 

 at the sun, and a question was asked of one at the other end 

 of the wire, the questioner could eat his breakfast while the 



