MACHINERY OF THE HEAVENS RUNNING DOWN. 42 1 



distance of millions of millions of years. It is true that 

 the sun may have cooled millions of years before the con- 

 summation of the final crash. It is true that a million of 

 years before the cooling of the sun the earth may have be- 

 come desolate and tenantless, as it was a million of years 

 before it received its first inhabitant, or as the moon is to- 

 day, poised in space before our very eyes. It is true that 

 thousands of years may yet elapse before the ordinary 

 powers of geology shall have leveled the continents, or 

 changed their habitable conditions to such an extent that 

 man and other organic beings will have passed away. But 

 the magnitude of the numbers by which these intervals of 

 time are symbolized does not embarrass the argument. In- 

 finity dwells not alone in years. Are the recitals of Astron- 

 omy less fanciful than these ? Are the data with which she 

 deals less staggering to the human mind ? We think our- 

 selves dwelling in the immediate neighborhood of the sun, 

 since, perchance, his light comes to us in eight and a half 

 minutes. Yet his distance is such that a traveler, setting 

 out for the sun by railway on the day of his birth, and 

 traveling continually thirty miles an hour, would attain 

 the age of fourscore before having spanned one fourth of 

 the vast interval. Were he and his posterity to complete 

 the journey, and were generations to succeed each other 

 according to the established rule, the twelfth generation 

 would appear before the station should be reached. The 

 great luminary would be pressed by the foot of his great- 

 grandson's great-grandson's great-grandson, and he would 

 be upon the tottering verge of fourscore. Had Christopher 

 Columbus set sail for the sun instead of a new continent, 

 and traveled continuously at three times the speed of a 

 steam-ship, he would only have reached his destination 

 this year. This is the distance which light travels over 

 in eight and a half minutes. There is no doubt admissible 



