384 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



organic world, when called up before us by the sorcery of 

 the chemist proves to be a gas which cannot be seen, tasted, 

 nor felt, it cannot surprise us that the force of antagoniza- 

 tiou by which all beauty and glory upon the earth are per- 

 petually called into being, should be the divinest aiEuence 

 which can come from above, the gentle sunshine, glorious in 

 all its attributes. 



The sun is but a star, the fixed stars are also suns, many 

 of them being a thousand times larger than our own. Their 

 light comes to us from the profoundest distances in space. 

 The light from the nearest fixed star occupies a little more 

 than three years in reaching our earth, and yet, as has been 

 stated, it travels with the incomprehensible speed of 185,300 

 miles at every tick of the clock. The light that beams upon 

 us this evening from the dog star, Sirius, left that distant 

 orb in 1879 ; and we have gathered into our ba.rus the crops 

 of four seasons since it started on its way. These allusions to 

 stellar light are made as preliminary to the statement that the 

 light of the stars is identical with that which comes from the 

 sun. Luminous impulses which expend themselves upon 

 the retina of the eye in a few minutes after they have left 

 the central orb of our system, afiect the brain in exactly the 

 same way as those which have been many thousand years 

 travelling from the uttermost bounds of the telescopic uni- 

 verse. The stellar light has the same chemical efiect as solar 

 light ; it comes under the dominion of the spectroscope, and 

 affords lines and shadows corresponding with sunlight in 

 many respects. If stellar light was abundant and accom- 

 panied with heat, its actinic effects upon the vegetation of 

 our farms would result in the growth and full maturity of 

 crops. Upon how many farms on distant spheres this light 

 falls, arousinor dormant energies and bringino; to view the 

 useful and the beautiful, we do not venture even to surmise. 



Our sun we know to be the great centre of vital dynamics 

 and fountain of life impulsions ; and it has charge of the 

 destiny of our planet, alike its masses and its atoms. If it 

 be but a solitary star among the countless hosts of the celes- 

 tial spheres ; if the earth be a scene of life, beauty and in- 

 telligence, only by virtue of its astronomical relations ; if 



