THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 5 
scope, it will enable you to tell one kind of gas 
from another, even when they are both ninety-one 
millions of miles away on the face of the sun ; nay 
more, it will read for you the nature of the different 
gases in the far distant stars, billions of miles away, 
and actually tell you whether you could find there any 
of the same metals which we have on the earth. 
We might find hundreds of such fairy tales in the 
domain of science, but these three will serve as ex- 
amples, and we must pass on to make the acquaint- 
ance of the science-fairies themselves, and see if they 
are as real as our old friends. 
Tell me, why do you love fairy-land ? what is its 
charm ? Is it not that things happen so suddenly 
so mysteriously, and without man having anything to 
do with it ? In fairy-land, flowers blow, houses spring 
up like Aladdin's palace in a single night, and people 
are carried hundreds of miles in an instant by the 
touch of a fairy wand. 
And then this land is not some distant country 
to which we can never hope to travel. It is here 
in the midst of us, only our eyes must be opened or 
we cannot see it. Ariel and Puck did not live in 
some unknown region. ' On the contrary, Ariel's 
song is 
" Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 
In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 
There I couch when owls do cry. 
On the bat's back I do fly, 
After summer, merrily.'' 
The peasant falls asleep some evening in a wood, 
and his eyes are opened by a fairy wand, so that he 
