CELESTIAL MEASURINGS AND WEIGHINGS. 2OI 



continued observation. They have received it, and 

 (with exception of those subsequent corrections in the 

 numerical values which we have noticed and included 

 in the above statement) they remain intact, and rank 

 among the well-established facts of astronomy. More- 

 over, numerous other stars have been subjected to ex- 

 amination, some by one, some by the other method, 

 And the result is not a little surprising. Up to the pre- 

 sent time, out of all the stars examined, only a very few 

 exhibit any distinctly measurable amount of parallax. 

 The list hitherto accumulated consists only of about ten 

 or at most a dozen. Of these a Centauri, in the south- 

 ern hemisphere, is the nearest. It is a fine star of the 

 first magnitude, the third or fourth in brightness of all 

 the sidereal host. This is our next neighbour. On the 

 other hand, Sirius, the brightest of all the stars, and 

 Lyra (next to Sirius, one of the four most conspicuous 

 stars in our hemisphere) stand low in the order of prox- 

 imity. This, of course, only proves that among the 

 stars there exists a very wide range of absolute bright- 

 ness, but by no means invalidates the strong a priori 

 reasons for admitting distance as a very important ele- 

 ment in determining their relative apparent brightness. 



(26.) But how, it will be asked, came such a seem- 

 ingly insignificant object as this No. 6 1 to be selected 

 for examination at all, to the exclusion or postponement 

 of so many more conspicuous ? We reply, by reason of 

 its large apparent proper motion. None of the stars we 

 see maintains quite the same relative situation among its 

 compeers. It would be strange if it did. Unless nailed 



