21 



and South Poles would necessarily always point towards 

 some one spot in the constellation of the Little Bear in 

 the North and Octant in the South; meanwhile in point 

 of fact throughout the year we find that the northern 

 and Southern constellations confronting the poles change 

 -every month. Such a relative position of the constellations 

 speaks eloquently in favor of the supposition that the 

 eclectic of the sun is the result of the earth's rolling from 

 side to side and not of a fixed inclination of the earth's 

 axis. The fact also that the summer solstice begins from 

 the 10th of June (O S) and the winter solstice from the 



Humming-top. 



10th December, signifying as it does a delay in the 

 Dearth's movement, can only be accounted for by this 

 rolling of earth from side to side. 



Lastly, the most recent researches of the Paris Obser- 

 vatory, published in the pictorial astronomy of Flamma- 

 rion, explain the process of the earth's diurnal revolution 

 in the following terms : ff ln the first place the axis which, 

 continued into space, intersects the heavens at the point 

 called the pole, is not always in one and the same po- 

 sition; it shifts slowly, describing a conic figure, like a 

 humming-top, which, spinning on the floor, inclines its 



