MK DISCOVI kl D 1x5 



brigli and a "crape" or MUte - coloured ring 



nearer still to the planet Did Herachel not aee and 

 all tin- . to observe the interval 



between the very bright and Dg \V. 



can only express our surprise if one 00 quick of eye, 



so careful to observe, aacribed to the bright 

 in 1 794, what he did not aee or delineate on it in 1792, 



" crape " existed then aa it exists now. 



when at the 



Cape of Good Hope, made a careful aearch for the two 

 moons discovered by hia illuatrioua futh< r He had 

 all hut given it up in despair when, looking foi 

 uth.rfive "with the 20-feet reflector, which betook 

 with him to South Africa, " and a polished new mirror, 

 there atood Mr Sixth ! . . . Next night it was k 

 view long enough for Saturn to have left it behind by 

 its own motion, had it been a star. ... So this is 

 ai last a thing made out," he writes. "As for No. 

 Seven, I have no hope of ever seeing it. " 



ice Herachel's time the minds of men have become 



'. iar with strings of meteorites, millions of miles in 

 length, through which our earth plunges in its yearly 

 journey round the sun. If they form, or come in tiim 

 to form, a continuous ring about the sun, one hundred 

 thousand miles in breadth, we may have on a vastly 

 larger scale a parallel to the rings of Saturn. The 

 breadth of the latter is only about one-third of th< 

 breadth of one well-known stream of meteors, and 

 l.-i.u'tli is not a quarter of a million of miles. It 

 then these rings of the planet are similarly composed 

 of separate masses, great and small, and are not con- 

 tinuous rings, perhaps 250 miles in thickness, a sAftcllit*- 

 " float i n i; in a fluid like water, or running in a notch, 





