No^^EMBER 23, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



647 



proud of your record in this the most exact 

 and perhaps the most fascinating of all the 

 sciences. 



I am sure, however, that you as univer- 

 sity men are all interested in the great 

 progress made in this noble science by your 

 colleagues all over the world, American 

 astronomers coming from American univer- 

 sities are gathering, constantly gathering, 

 new sheaves from the stellar fields, fields 

 that seem to be perpetually ripening for 

 the harvest. 



It was but yesterday we heard of a new 

 star w^hose brilliant light burst forth in the 

 heavens, not when we first caught a glimpse 

 of it, but may be a hundred years ago, and 

 it is so far distant that its light, flashing 

 across the stellar depths at the rate of 

 186,000 miles per second, has taken all 

 these years to reach us. 



Placing the slit of our telespectroscope 

 upon the new star, we observe the awe- 

 inspiring phenomenon 'of a sun in flames.' 

 Our inference is that there has been a col- 

 lision between two stellar worlds some- 

 where in the universe, and now we witness 

 the elements 'melting with fervent heat' 

 perhaps a hundred years after the awful 

 cataclysm has taken place. A year later 

 the light of that brilliant star had faded 

 from mortal vision, but the astronomical 

 camera, penetrating far deeper into stellar 

 depths than the human eye, even when 

 aided by the telescope, reveals to us the 

 story of a disintegrated world, now a mass 

 of nebula, ready to go through its long 

 evolution, possibly in countless millions of 

 years to become a star again. 



'Tis a fascinating theme upon which I 

 could dwell for all the time at my com- 

 mand, but "I must come back to this good 

 old world again, where the birds still sing 

 and the fields yet are green, surely the 

 place of all we have found, the best suited 

 for our dwelling place." 



For more than a quarter century your 

 speaker has had the privilege of knowing 

 and associating with the men who have 

 been wresting the secrets of the heavens 

 from their hiding places. The 'new as- 

 tronomy' has taken the place of the old, 

 and marvelous have been the discoveries 

 made by these men, university men, in this 

 beautiful science. 



But with astronomy as with all other 

 sciences there are as yet many problems 

 unsolved, it is an unfinished science and 

 the storehouse of heaven is still full of 

 treasures for the searcher after truth. 



Ye quenchless stars; so eloquently bright, 

 Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night, 

 While half the world is lapped in downy dreams, 

 And round the lattice creep your midnight beams. 

 How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes 

 In lambent beauty looking from the skies. 



There are some problems in astronomy 

 that invite the cooperation of the physicist 

 and the engineer. I have already men- 

 tioned the fact that the physicist has util- 

 ized the solar energy very nearly at head- 

 quarters, but that source, namely, of the 

 great waterfalls, has its limits. 



For many years I had the honor to be 

 associated with the late Professor Langley 

 in his studies of the radiant energy from 

 the sun. Many attempts were made to 

 conserve this energy direct without the use 

 of concentrating lenses or mirrors, one of 

 which gave great promise of success. Some 

 day it will be done. Perhaps there will 

 come a time when our fuel supply will be 

 exhausted, then why not capture the orig- 

 inal source of energy and make it do our 

 bidding. Professor Langley calculated 

 that it would require all the coal of all the 

 coal fields of Pennsylvania to keep up the 

 energy of the sun one thousandth of a 

 second. 



AVhen we learn that the solar energy, if 

 conserved, would approximately equal a 

 horse power for each square meter of 



