THE SUN. 



mind, the sun is undoubtedly one of vastly superior interest. 

 The sun the fountain of light and life to a family of circum- 

 volving worlds the inexhaustible store of genial warmth by 

 which the countless tribes of organised beings that people these 

 globes are sustained the physical bond whose predominating 

 attraction gives stability, uniformity, and harmony, to the move- 

 ments of the entire planetary system : to collect together in a 

 brief compass the information which modern scientific research 

 has supplied relating to this body, cannot be otherwise than an 

 interesting and agreeable task. 



2. When we direct our inquiries to any object in the heavens, 

 the first questions which present themselves naturally to us are, 

 "What is its distance, magnitude, motion, and position ?" When 

 we say that the distances of the bodies composing the solar system 

 can be measured with the same degree of relative accuracy with 

 which we ascertain the distances of bodies on the surface of the 

 earth, those who are unaccustomed to investigations of this kind 

 usually receive the statement with a certain degree of doubt and 

 incredulity ; they cannot conceive how such spaces can be 

 accurately measured, or indeed measured at all. Thus, when 

 they are told that the sun is at a distance from the earth 

 amounting to nearly 100,000000 of miles, the mind revolts from 

 the idea that such a space could be exactly ascertained and esti- 

 mated. Yet, let us ask, why this difficulty ? whence this incre- 

 dulity ? Is it because the distance thus measured is enormously 

 great, greater transcendently than any distance we are accustomed 

 to contemplate upon our own globe ? To this we reply that the 

 magnitude of a distance or space does not constitute of itself any 

 difficulty in its admeasurement. Nay, on the contrary, it is often 

 the case that we are able to measure large distances with greater 

 relative accuracy than small ones ; this is frequently so in the 

 surveys conducted on the surface of our own globe. If, then, the 

 greatness of the magnitudes does not constitute of itself any 

 difficulty, to what are we to ascribe the doubt entertained by the 

 popular mind in regard to such measurement ? It will, perhaps, 

 be replied that the object, whose distance we claim to have 

 measured, is inaccessible to us ; that we cannot travel over the 

 intermediate space, and therefore cannot be conceived to measure 

 it. But again, let us ask whether this circumstance of being 

 inaccessible constitutes any real difficulty in the measurement of 

 the distance of an object ? The military engineer, who directs 

 his projectiles against the buildings within a town which is 

 besieged, can, as we well know, level them so as to cause a shell 

 to drop on any individual building which may have been chosen. 

 To do this, he must know the exact distance of the building from 



