June lo, 1897] 



NATURE 



39 



Within the last week of the ceremony the young men have 

 • ) undergo another and more severe ordeal. In a secluded 

 pot amongst the hills the old men, who have gone out in charge 

 I them, make a large fire of logs. When these have burned 

 !own, and the red-hot ashes remain, green boughs cf Eucalyptus 

 ire thrown on the fire, and on these the young men have to lie 

 lown in the he.at and stifling smoke until they receive per- 

 :iiission from the old men to get up. 



Finally, on the last night the men all congregate around a 

 .icred pole which has been erected close by the Parra, and 

 .ere, all night long, the old men decorate the backs and chests 

 t the younger men with designs, often very elaborate and dis- 

 tinctive, of the various totems. A man is not of necessity— in 

 fact, very seldom is — painted with the design of his own totem. 

 .AH night long the women remain awake and active in their 

 camp across the river, where again they make two fires in 

 -hallow pits, but this time closely side by side. 



Before sunrise the decorated men gather together at the base 

 f the sacred pole, the head man of the ceremony breaks 

 iirough the Parra mound, and across the opening thus formed 

 he old men lead their charges, all walking in single file and 

 hi)Iding one another's hands. In perfect silence the string of 

 painted men pass from the Engwurra ground across the bed of 

 the creek, and so on to the women's camp, where they form a 

 :^ioup, and halt some fifty yards away from the women, who 

 -lard behind their fires, which are now giving off dense clouds 

 jf smoke from green gum boughs. 



Then each old man takes the younger ones under his charge, 

 and with them runs up to the fires. The Bultharra and Panunga 

 men go to the fire made by the Purula and Kumarra women, 

 and vice versd, kneeling upon it while the women press them 

 down with their hands upon the men's shoulders. When all 

 have been upon the fires, the old men and the newly-made 

 Urliara cross the river-bed again to the Engwurra ground, and 

 sit around the sacred pole. The fire ceremonies are now com- 

 plete, but as yet the younger men may not speak to their 

 apmiirra, but must remain out in the bush. After a length of 

 time, varying from two weeks to perhaps six months, each 

 young man brings in a present of food called Chowarilya to 

 his apmurra man, when a sacred ceremony is performed, at 

 the close of which the mouths of the old and young men who 

 are present are touched either with the food brought in, or 

 with some object which has been used in the ceremony, and 

 the ban of silence is removed. 



PROFESSOR NEWCOMB ON THE DISTANCES 

 OF THE STARS} 



^PHE problem of the distances of the stars is of peculiar 

 interest in connection with the Copernican system. The 

 greatest objection to this system, which must have been more 

 clearly seen by astronomers themselves than by any others, was 

 found in the absence of any apparent parallax of the stars. If 

 the earth performed such an immeasurable circle around the sun 

 as Copernicus maintained, then, as it passed from side to side of 

 its orbit, the stars outside the solar system must appear to have 

 a corresponding motion in the other direction, and thus to swing 

 back and forth as the earth moved in one and the other direction. 

 The fact that not the slightest swing of that sort could be seen 

 was, from the time of Ptolemy, the basis on which the doctrine 

 A the earth's immobility rested. The difficulty was simply 

 ^nored by Copernicus and his immediate successors. 



An indication of the extent to which the difficulty thus arising 

 was felt is .seen in the title of a book published by Horrebow, 

 the Danish astronomer, some two centuries ago. This in- 

 dustrious observer, one of the first who used an instrument 

 resembling our meridian transit of the present day, determined 

 to see if he could find the parallax of the stars by observing the 

 intervals at which a pair of stars in opposite quarters of the 

 heavens crossed his meridian at opposite seasons of the year. 

 WTien, as he thought, he had won success, he published his 

 observations and conclusions under the title of " Copernicus 

 Triumphans." But, alas ! the keen criticism of his contemporaries 

 showed that what he supposed to be a swing of the stars from 

 season to season arose from a minute variation in the rate of his 

 clock, due to the different temperatures to which it was exposed 

 during the day and the night. The measurement of the distance 



1 Extracted from an address given by Prof. Simon Newcomb at the 

 dedication of the Flower Observatory, University of Pennsylvania, May 12. 



NO. 1 44 1, VOL. 56] 



even of the nearest stars evaded astronomical research, until 

 Bessel and Struve arose in the early part of the present 

 century. 



On .some aspects of the problem of the extent of the universe 

 light is being thrown even now. Evidence is gradually accu- 

 mulating which points to the probability that the successive 

 orders of smaller and smaller stars, which our continually in- 

 creasing telescopic power brings into view, are not situated at 

 greater and greater distances, but that we actually see the 

 boundary of our universe. This indication lends a peculiar 

 interest to various questions growing out of the motions of the 

 stars. Quite possibly the problem of these motions will be the 

 great one of the future astronomer. Even now it suggests 

 thoughts and questions of the most far-reaching character. 



I have seldom felt a more delicious sense of repose than when 

 crossing the ocean during the summer months I sought a place 

 where I could lie alone op the deck, look up at the constella- 

 tions, with Lyra near the zenith, and, while listening to the 

 clank of the engine, try to calculate the hundreds of millions of 

 years which would be required by our ship to reach the star a 

 Lyrte if she could continue her course in that direction without 

 ever stoppmg. It is a striking example of how easily we may 

 fail to realise our knowledge when I say that I have thought 

 many a time how deliciously one might pass those hundred 

 millions of years in a journey to the star a Lyrse, without its 

 occurring to me that we are actually making that very journey at 

 a speed compared with which the motion of a steamship is slow 

 indeed. Through every year, every hour, every minute, of 

 human history from the first appearance of man on the earth, 

 from the era of the builders of the Pyramids, through the times 

 of Caesar and Hannibal, through the period of every event that 

 history records, not merely our earth, but the sun and the whole 

 solar system with it, have been speeding their way towards the 

 star of which I speak on a journey of which we know neither the 

 beginning nor the end. During every clock-beat through which 

 humanity has existed it has moved on this journey by an amount 

 which we cannot specify more exactly than to say that it is 

 probably between five and nine miles per second. We are at 

 this moment thousands of miles nearer to a Lyrze than we were 

 a few minutes ago when I began this discourse, and through 

 every future moment, for untold thousands of years to come, the 

 earth and all there is on it will be nearer to « Lyree, or nearer to 

 the place where that star now is, by hundreds of miles for every 

 minute of time come and gone. When shall we get there ? 

 Probably in less than a million years, perhaps in half a million. 

 We cannot tell exactly, but get there we must if the laws of 

 nature and the laws of motion continue as they are. To attain 

 to the stars was the seemingly vain wish of the philosopher, but 

 the whole human race is, in a certain sense, realising this wish as 

 rapidly as a speed of six or eight miles a second can bring it 

 about. 



I have called attention to this motion because it may, in the 

 not distant future, afford the means of approximating to a 

 solution of the problem already mentioned, that of the extent of 

 the universe. Notwithstanding the success of astronomers 

 during the present century in measuring the parallax of a 

 number of stars, the most recent investigations show that there 

 are very few, perhaps hardly more than a score of stars of which 

 the parallax, and therefore the distance, has been determined 

 with any approach to certainty. Many parallaxes, determined 

 by observers about the middle of the century, have had to dis- 

 appear before the powerful tests applied by measures with the 

 heliometer ; others have been greatly reduced, and the distances 

 of the stars increased in proportion. So far as measurement 

 goes, we can only say of the distances of all the stars, except the 

 few whose parallaxes have been determined, that th^y are im- 

 measurable. The radius of the earth's orbit, a line more than 

 ninety millions of miles in length, not only vanishes from sight 

 before we reach the distance of the great mass of stars, but be- 

 comes such a mere point that, when magnified by the powerful 

 instruments of modern times, the most delicate appliances fail 

 to make it measurable. Here the solar motion comes to our 

 help. This motion, by which, as I have said, we are carried 

 unceasingly through space, is made evident by a motion of 

 most of the stars in the opposite direction, just as, passing 

 through a country on a railway, we see the houses on the right 

 and on the left being left behind us. It is clear enough 

 that the apparent motion will be more rapid the nearer the 

 object. We may, therefore, form some idea of the distance of 

 the stars when we know the amount of the motion. It is found 



