144 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



knowledge to the human race? It can not be expressed with the 

 few figures which suffice for the total of present- day financial trans- 

 actions. 



The stars are not lanterns hung out in the sky by angels at night, 

 but something inconceivably grander; they are suns, hundreds of 

 millions of suns, on the average comparable in size and brightness to 

 our sun. Is not this ascertained fact of nature a most ennobling one 

 to aspiring souls ? Do not these facts suggest and develop becoming 

 modesty in the minds of those who would know the truth and pattern 

 their lives in accordance with it ? 



The following conversation occurred one Saturday evening in the 

 month of June, 1912, at the eyepiece of the great telescope which 

 Mr. Warner and Mr. Swasey constructed and erected for the Lick 

 Observatory. I mention the time, June, 1912, because it is of the 

 essence of the story. 



Said the astronomer to the party of visitors: "The object which 

 you will see through the great telescope this evening is the star 

 cluster in Hercules, the finest cluster in the northern sky. Without 

 the telescope, by naked eye, this cluster may be seen if the observer 

 knows exactly where to look and has first-class eyes, but he will see 

 it as apparently a single star on the limit of vision, so faint that 

 many eyes will not see it at all. The telescope separates the cluster 

 into a multitude of stars. If you had the time to count them, they 

 would number fully six thousand, closely grouped in the center of 

 the cluster, but thinning out as you approach the edges. This one 

 object, then, which to the naked eye seems to be a single star on the 

 limit of vision, consists of at least as many stars as the eye alone 

 is able to see in the sky as a whole, northern and southern skies, sum- 

 mer and winter skies combined, and we do not doubt that long pho- 

 tographic exposures on the cluster, with a large reflecting telescope, 

 would record many more than six thousand. Each of these stars 

 is a sun and probably every one of those which you will see is larger 

 than our sun, for we are observing merely the brightest members 

 of the system. We do not know whether these suns have planets 

 revolving around them or not, as the cluster is entirely too far away 

 for us to see such planets, but planets probably exist there in great 

 numbers; possibly there are planets revolving around all of those 

 stars; possibly and probabty there are moons revolving around the 

 planets ; and finally, there may be life, vegetable, animal, intelligent 

 life upon those planets." 



One of the visitors upon descending from the observing chair, 

 much interested, questioned the astronomer: "Did you say those 

 stars are all suns ? " " Yes, sir." " Did you say that those stars are 

 really larger than our sun, on the average? " " Yes, sir." " Can you 



