A CENSUS OF THE SKY.^ 



By R. A. Sampson, M. A., F. R. S., 



Astronomer Royal for Scotland. 



[With 6 plates.] 



It might seem to call for some rfemark, even some apology, that 

 at a period like the present one, when all the ordinary interests of 

 life disappear or are transformed, that we should meet as we had 

 arranged to meet, and exchange with one another the different 

 truisms of science. 



There occurs to me a passage in a book by a celebrated private in 

 the French Army, Anatole France's " Isle of Penguins "" ; one of his 

 characters, deeply depressed by the perversity of the world, reflects 

 somewhat as follows : " Since riches and civilization bring as many 

 occasions for war as barbarism and poverty, since the folly and ill 

 will of mankind are incurable, there remains one good deed to do, 

 some wise man shall collect enough dynamite to blow this planet up. 

 Then when it whirls in fragments across space some imperceptible 

 alleviation will be felt in the universe and some satisfaction will be 

 given to the universal conscience, which, indeed, does not exist." 



While we feel as much as any this same savage indignation— - 

 Swift's sceva indignatio — that folly and ill will have still the power 

 to throw the whole world off its bearings, and while we are all of 

 us busily engaged in collecting enough djmamite to blow some partis 

 of it to pieces, it is wise to remind ourselves that there are other things 

 besides folly and ill will that are indestructible, and among these is 

 the desire to increase natural knowledge. We are at no loss for 

 precedents. Our Royal Society was initiated in the midst of civil 

 war. The " Principia " was published a year before the Great 

 Revolution. Kepler found in the Thirty Years' War no reason to 



1 Evening discourse delivered before the British Association Sept. 11, 1915. Reprinted, 

 by author's permission, from The Observatory, a monthly review of astronomy, vol. 38, 

 No. 493, Nov., 1915. 



73839°— SM 1916 13 181 



