EDITORIAL 43 



US with a velocity that gives no time for contemplation or for 

 balancing action with thought. What a panacea for this danger- 

 ous condition of humanity would be the establishing of a sun-dial 

 in every home and casting into the furnace all the watches and 

 clocks! In case one does not have a garden with roses, which 

 gives the traditional environment to the dial, one could at least 

 have a "noon-mark" on the window sill which would accomplish 

 the same desirable results. 



ALPHA ORIONIS AND MORTAL HUMILITY 



Astronomy was the first of the sciences to be studied and devel- 

 oped ; and to-day it is among the foremost in the matter of adding 

 new knowledge of the great facts and processes of the machinery of 

 the Universe. The telescope, the spectroscope, photography have 

 each, in turn, increased our knowledge vastly as to the stars, their 

 composition, distances, movements and numbers. Then a 

 geologist gave us the planetesimal theory to replace the old nebular 

 hypothesis of the^ origin of the Universe. Always the physicists 

 have claimed the heavens as a part of their realm, so we need not be 

 surprised that Professor Michelson has devised a method for star 

 measurement by means of which we now know that the beautiful 

 red star above Orion's belt, Betelgeuse, has a diameter greater 

 than that of the orbit of our earth around the sun, and that if it 

 were in the place of our sun, shining upon us it would shut from us 

 all view of the sky. Yet Betelgeuse may have or may have had 

 worlds like our own whirling around it, inhabited as is our world, 

 and subject to the same laws that govern us; and Betelgeuse and 

 our sun are two only of forty million stars that photography reveals 

 in our skies. Why should we on our minute dot of a planet regard 

 our afi"airs of such tremendous importance ? Why worry ^ 



NOTICE 



Index for volume 16 will be mailed 



with February issue 



