Show YOUNG PROBABILITIES improbabilities IM astronomical deductions and peculiarities to silence u not convince I 1 used to study astronomy one can study astronomy a great deal and learn but very little especially afif studies it as I 1 did it Is an inexhaustible field of tempt to coyer any considerable f of if with a digestive survey egiy out a long while before the comes even tolerably familiar the cause of my devoting some lieue time to it was an inherent and able propensity to be engaged tn something that there is no money fl so when I 1 dropped it I 1 went ism and have been there ever since there are some things in science of the upper deep that and some extraordinary take into their mental and retain the fact that come along in their order without ascertaining abey and wherefore is as far as tl majority care about going ignorance is blissful and they t hould lot be disturbed I 1 spent half an hour ing to an obtuse questioner that there are five days 01 equal in this week that there bog ont till after each succeeding day will be longer than its immediate predecessor time in june like a lawyer with a bad case he knew better prove il unscientific person refuses to believe that both and nights are slowly but sorely getting longer it does look a btttle tao tough to be by anybody but it 13 a fact all the same ane proof gravelly globe so called on which w exist for a season awl then bid good bye to is hot a globe at all but an oblate spheroid it may have been rou nd once bathke blaina it got flattened at the poles though not through the same baure caure when it was evolved out ol 01 the inscrutable dep fihs ihs of ether denominated space it wa as geology shows a molten mass jicy ing with beat and clouded with vapor hat is it gave alorth sound and appear ince as soon as it bad attracted to it from ats surrounding quantity of the fugitive atmosphere which must have been floating aimlessly through space to create the necessary conditions for their production a ma tion was imparted to it since both ing ever starts or stops itself and as llie tendency of liquids is to be globular go bular so it was with our habitation being in motion a globe revolves and unless the material is solid etwas not in our case there will be an increase or bulging out of the substance at that part of chlea is ehni distant from the termini of the axis the latter in this instance being imaginary as moa people will say all in contained id hence a slight depres poke or points on the surface at which there is no revolution how the earth got to be a member of the suns retinue I 1 dont know and therefore wont tell the presumption is that he was the nearest sun to our mother when the latter was evolved and bis attraction was so powerful powei ful that between the straight iroe we were making tor elsewhere and the at nesa of the source of light a compromise was effected by means of which we dont follow the line and dont go to the BUD but pursue slightly elliptical orbit around him As we go Sw ingin round the circle and revolving on ear own axis the side next to the solar centre is lighted which of course means day the other side beier in the condition of darkness or night but in twelve hours the positions are reversed that portion where day prevailed being immersed in the shades of night and vice versa but the impatient reader t he bas read thus far may ask how do you propose to show that both day and night are both gradually lengthening we might understand how a proposition that one was being lengthened at the expense of the other was feasible but the other is absurd on its face 1 am coming to that all these preliminaries are necessary in order that the conclusion maybe understood the depression at the prow of the mighty craft we are navigating the unfathomable sea of space upon must be something of a slight retardation causing deflections of light at various times corresponding with the aberrations of the earth these aberrations are shown by observation and calculation to be the means of gradually shifting the centre of gravity GO that we are constantly slipping our bearings the northern terminus of our axis being quite a distance from where it was some thousands of years ago as we occupy that part of the hemisphere which is in fining toward the sun it is easily seen abat as the inclination increases we get a greater period of continuous light and a correspond angly elongated period 0 continuous darkness when our side of the earth is from the sun now do you see it if you do you may say that the i whole proposition however logical and scientifically accurate is an abstraction str action that as a matter of fact there is ap perceptible diminution or lengthening of the days or nights except such as recur with the seasons it does look that way I 1 admit but your observations ions are imperfect there is not as much water in the ocean as there once was but we do not discern the difference a cup full taken out of it and thrown on the land decreases its volume so much but the diminution is imperceptible so with the other proposition the days and nights are increasing in length but we are not sensible of it we dont have to be it dont concern us nor will it our posterity for a great many generations the rate of increase as determined by close inspection and careful computation is half a second every hundred years A person to whom I 1 to explain that space was illimitable that the flight of lightning or of light itself in a direct line for countless billions of acles would faud no stopping place that ailt was a bottomless sea in which mere is no cast nor west no north nor south no up and no down reversed the me by saving that I 1 would make a rood methodist one of them dellera abat has a god without any body parts or passions and sits on top ot throne still I 1 have not changed my mind and when last beard from he bad not changed his the principal thing abat needed about him when I 1 left him was bis shirt i speaking of light iti svery nimble factor in the economy of the heavens its velocity has been measured with absolute accuracy but as the must go to press gome time before the year runs out I 1 will not attempt to explain the process light when in proper condition and not trained down too fine can sprint alon at the rate of miles per second under some conditions it can do a little better but this rate generally brings it along early enough sometimes a little too early bior convenience at this speed it reaches our earth from the polar star in the brief space of years so that that as not quite so neighboring as it looks if the most remote of the visible fixed stars were to be obliterated today to day we along toward us at the easygoing easy going rate of miles per day if you want to make an unbeliever real mad prove to him which is easily done whether he thereafter believes or not that the sun is a great many thousands of ailee nearer to us in winter than it ia in summer that if there are any people on the visible aide of the moon their beads point thia way and when they look at the earth they look up aa much as we do when we look at their planet that our satellite is always lall ane toward the earth but never lessening its mean distance from us and it wi I 1 be safe to is ail true bow even i 1 am in indifferent of |