104 A COSMOSCOPE. 



seasons of the year, and, of course, in every point of its orbit. The instru- 

 ment also shows the gradual variation of the inclination of the earth's 

 axis to the ecliptic, and the circle which it would make in the heavens in 

 the course of a grand cycle of time, 25,000 years. The following descrip- 

 tion of this philosophic application of the mechanical powers is from the 

 inventor himself: 



''The instrument was suggested by a conversation of Chief Justice Daly 

 with the inventor upon the subject of the precession of the equinoxes, and 

 though it was originally designed to render literal interpretation of the 

 facts involved in that phase of our earth's relation to the sun, yet it pre- 

 sents with equal precision all the other facts of motion and their attendant 

 phenomena. The sun is represented by a flame, situated a few inches above 

 the centre of a round table upon which is figured a star chart, bounded by 

 the twelve stars of the zodiac. The outer end of a slender arm extending 

 from the centre is surrounded by a globe, upon which the light omitted by 

 the flame is condensed by a lens. As this light steadily illuminates the 

 hemisphere of the globe which is turned toward it, and as the axis about 

 which the globe rotates is poised at the same angle of inclination to the 

 plane of its orbit as that of the earth is to the plane of its orbit about the 

 sun, it follows that precisely the same phases of illumination are presented 

 upon both globes. The rising and setting of the sun, the changing lengths 

 of day and night in different latitudes, the changes of the seasons, the long 

 polar night and day, are all seen to occur in their proper order of succes- 

 sion. The eccentricity of the orbit with the sun in one of the foci of the 

 ellipse, and the shifting of the direction of that eccentricity among the 

 stars, is also presented. When the mimic moon is added, the eclipses of 

 that body and of the sun present themselves, the shadow of the moon 

 passing across the globe, first near the pole, and at each successive lunation 

 lowers down until it passes off at the opposite pole, thenceforward the 

 shadow of the moon passing into space clear of the globe until the com- 

 bined mutations bring back the period of eclipses, thus presenting the facts 

 successively as they occur in nature. An additional arm carries a comet so 

 near the centre as to nearly graze the mimic sun at its perihelion, whence 

 it departs to its aphelion distance in far off space, thence returning as be- 

 fore to the 8 an. 



"At the instant the globe is passing its vernal equinox a bell is struck — 

 a single blow, which, at each revolution of the globe about the centre, calls 

 attention to that fact, so that the observer may see that the globe is in its 

 equinox at the stroke of the bell, and note also that the equinox has slightly 

 shifted its place upon the ecliptic — receded upon the star chart — gone back- 

 ward in the sign of the zodiac in which it is then occurring, which slow 

 shifting finally carries the equinoxes about the entire circle of the heavens, 

 and, at the same time, changes the direction of the globe's axis of rotation, 

 which returns to its original direction when the equinoxes return to their 

 original position among the stars. — New York Herald. 



