THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 



THE SCRIPTURES OF THE SKY. 



Read befo7-e the Hamilton Assocmtzo7t, Febriiarv 24th, iSgS. 



BY JOHN A. PATERSON, ESQ. 



Out of the vast plenitude of worlds that fill space, our 

 attention is more immediately centred in that family of worlds 

 that lie grouped around the sun. These worlds are called 

 planets and the faniily is called the solar system. Like a fleet 

 of many boats rocked in the ocean of the heavens, the earth 

 and her sisters float in the bosom of space bound to the central 

 sun by that mysterious cable known as the force of gravity. 

 This is the same force which guides the linnet's feather as it 

 flutters earthward, and at the same time reins in the mighty 

 Sirius as he rushes through the abysmal depths of space. The 

 •earth is 8000 miles in diameter. Her distance from the sun is, 

 according to the most recent i-esults, 93,790,000 miles. She 

 moves in her orbit at a rate of j8 miles every second of time, 

 and so gently, not a jar to waken the tiny fledgling in the nest 

 that swings upon the twig, and not a tremor to empty the cha- 

 lice of the hare-bell of its beads of dew. 



The diameter of the solar system, at the present known as 

 far as Neptune faintly shines, is 5,578 million of miles. Across 

 this vast space a beam of light travelling at a rate of nearly 

 200,000 miles a second would take 8 hours and 19 minutes to 

 pass. But vast as this diameter really is compared with the 

 size of our earth, it dwindles into insignificance when compared 

 with the distance of even the nearest fixed star, from which 

 light takes over 4 years to i-each us. The most reliable meas- 

 urements place Alpha Centauri, the nearest of the fixed stars, 

 at a distance of 275,000 times the distance of the earth from the 

 sun. Let us consider for a moment how we should appear or 

 more exactly not appear could we get off our world and scan it 



