THE DISTANCE OF THE STARS.
The idea of distance is often best conveyed by some every-day illustration. In a recent lecture by Dr. William Huggins, the eminent English astronomer, as to the results of spectrum analysis as applied to the heavenly bodies, this striking statement was used to give some faint notion of the enormous distance of the stars. "The earth's orbit," said the lecturer, "which is more than 190,000,000 miles in diameter, at most of the stars dwindles to a mere point, and has no sensible size whatever. If you suppose a railway from the earth to the nearest fixed star, which is supposed to be twenty billions of miles from us; and if you suppose the price of the fare to be one penny for every hundred miles—not, mind! a penny per mile—then, if you take a mass of gold to the ticket office equal to the national debt ($3,800,000,000) it would not be sufficient to pay for a ticket to the nearest fixed star. And I think I should not be wrong in saying that there are stars so far off that the price of one penny for every hundred miles, the whole treasure of the earth would not be sufficient to pay for a ticket."