712 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



The sun, attended by his planets, satellites and comets, is sweep- 

 ing through space towards the star P/, in the cotistellation of 

 Hercules, with a velocity of 33,550,000 miles per annum. 



It is further demonstrated that we are all in the course of a 

 irreat astral revolution, the centre of which M. Maedler has shown 

 to l3c in the bright star Alcyon, near the centre of the beautiful 

 little cluster, the Pleiades. This fact has been confirmed by others. 



To o'ive some idea of the vastness of the scale on which this 

 great structure is erected, I will give a few figures. 



The star Pi, in Hercules, is at such a distance from us, that its 

 lijxht in coming at the rate of 12,000,000 miles per minute, re- 

 quires forty-six years. It will take then 1,800,000 years to reach 

 the point in space where that star now resides. 



Light to come from Alcyon at the grcjit astral center, requires 

 537 years=47,041,200 minutes. This multiplied by 12,000,000, 

 the distance which light travels per minute, gives 564,494,400,- 

 000,000 of miles, and this divided by 33,554,000, the distance 

 passed over by the sun in a year, gives 16,825,585,000,000 of 

 years for the sun to move that distance; and this is only the 

 length of the radius vector of the great astral orl)it of the sun, 

 which we may multiply by six for the time required to perform a 

 single revolution, which is 100,953,522,000,000 of years. Should 

 it be demonstrated, however, that this great orbit is a very eccen- 

 tric one, and that the sun is now in aphelion, or more properly 

 aplialcyon, and moving at a slow rate of speed, then the estimated 

 time of revolution would be much reduced — say to 30,000,000,- 

 000,000 years. Even these figures are enough to astound the im- 

 mao'ination. But M'e must lay aside our childish modes of think- 

 ing and learn to view nature as she is, in both the infinite and the 

 infinitesimal. How strongly the foregoing figures contrast with 

 the following. In bringing the microscope to our aid, it is said, 

 that a single grain of the polishing powder tripoli, present to our 

 astonished view 2,000,000 of the skeletons of once living beings — 

 and that the spider's webb, of which it Avould take 36,000 to make 

 the thickness of a thread of connnon sewing silk, is composed of 

 6,000 finer filaments which were secreted by 6,000 perfect glands. 



I ask now, would it not be reasonable to suppose that the siya 

 might, somewhere in the course of his great astral round, find 

 himself in a region of cold, a great astral icinter, where all would 

 be chilled and congealed, and then, in the course of a few billions 

 of years, might reach a climate more mild, — a great astral summer , 



