PREFACE 



NEW heavens and a new earth to-day meet an 

 observer's eye. To our forefathers, skies, land 

 and sea were held to be little changed from the 

 moment when they left the Master's hand. To- 

 day we learn that the sun and his attendant 

 orbs were once a cloud of slightest texture, of 

 slowest motion, of elements one and the same. 

 With some account of what the sun can teach us, 

 this volume begins, citing one of the ablest ex- 

 positors of the nineteenth century, Professor 

 Proctor. 



The sun, for all his importance to our earth, 

 is but one star amid an uncounted host. In 

 an address by Professor Newcomb he tells us 

 of the profound questions written across the mid- 

 night skies. As we read his pages we feel a new 

 sense of the grandeur ot the universe, a new 

 reverence for the men who have enlarged its 

 horizons and disentangled its web of law and 

 rule. 



Of like dignity is the essay by Professor Young, 

 with its well-grounded hope that the astronomer 

 is soon to gather and garner harvests as rich as 

 ever yet came to his granary of fact and inter- 

 pretation. These new harvests will doubtless be 

 mainly won by the camera, to be created more 

 accurate and sensitive than the instruments of 

 to-day. Fitly, therefore, a sketch of celestial 



