IGNORANCE, A LOSS WITHOUT EXCUSE 



TAR-GAZING was never more popular than it 

 is now. Yet, notwithstanding this activity in 

 the cultivation of astronomical studies, it is 

 probably safe to assert that hardly one person 

 in a hundred knows the chief stars by name, or 

 can even recognize the principal' constellations^ 

 miuch less distinguish the planets from the 

 fixed stars. And of course they know nothing 

 of the intellectual pleasure that accompanies a knowledge 

 of the stars.. Modern astronomy is so rapidly and wonder- 

 fully linking the earth and the sun together, with all the 

 orbs of space, in the bonds of close physical relationship, 

 that a person of education and general intelligence can 

 offer no valid excuse for not knowing where to look for 

 Sirius or Aldebaran, or the Orion nebula, or the planet 

 Jupiter. As Australia and New Zealand and the islands 

 of the sea are made a part of the civilized world through 

 the expanding influence of commerce and cultivation, 

 so the suns and planets around us are, in a certain 

 sense, falling under the dominion of the restless and re- 

 sistless mind of man. We have come to possess vested in- 

 tellectual interest in Mars and Saturn, and in the sun and 

 all his multitude of fellows, which nobody can afford to 

 ignore. — Serviss. 



M 



^^^^^^^^Mp?Si,F'^^P^ 



