The Ouachita telegraph. [volume] (Monroe, La.) 1865-1889, 1881-09-30

of men, but of whole races and tribes
Of various animals and plants. Just SO
in the heavens about us the dead are
mingled with the living. 1t is to my
mind the most suggestive discovery of
modern astronomy that the universe
is full of dead suns-suns whose light
has gone out, whose fires have been
eXtinguished, and which no longer
shed life-giving and life-preserving rays
upon the worlds that may be imagined
yet circline in coldncss and gloom
about them. What has this to do with
the Winking Demon: Why, every
thing. I believe it is generally conced-
ed, though Prof. Newcomb seems to
dissent, that the variations in the light
of Aigol are caused by some huge dark
| body revolving around it ut frightful
| rate of speed. There are other variable
stars whose phenomena can be account
ed for in the same way. In the case OF
Algol there is evidence that the dark
| body is rapidly approaching the star,
drawing nearer with every circle.
When it strikes, fit is to strike, who
can picture the extent of that catas-
trophe? Then, indeed, that mysterious
dark body will become visible, blazing
with the light of a hundred suns, and
unable to escape from the fiery dcstruc-
tlOA lhoL IL HIS
care there any other dark bodies
like this known to astronomers?''
"Oh, yes: the great star Sirius is
accompanied by hinge body of the
kind. 1t is not altogether dark, for
with large telescopes it can occasionally
be seen glimmering family close to the
star. Astronomers knew it was there
before they got glimpse of it, for it
caused disturbances in the proper mo-
ton of the star. Another of these dark
bodies which astronomers are sure eX-
lists, although no human eye ever saw
| it, is logging the star Procyon, one of
the brightest in the sky. You may see
the star. now low down in the east,
north Of Sirius and below the Twins.
The invisible body that hovers about it
is evidently of large size; for it causes
considerable perturbations in the stars
motion. 1t may once have been a sun
as brilliant as Procyon itself, but now
| not ray comes from it. Still, astron-
! omers can point out the changes in its
position, us its attraction pulls the star
now this way and now that.
"Ifspace is filed with these myster-
ious dark bodies, collisions between
them and living, or light-giving, suns
are not impossible. You know that
our sun is in rapid motion, carrying
his family of worlds along with him in
his flight. SO all the stars are instinct
with motion. Our lives are so short
and their distances are so great that we
can hardly appreciate these motions,
yet they are swift beyond comprehen-
sion. Some of the stars are approach
ing, Others receding, all moving in
some direction. The consultations
whose forms are so familiar to us are
falling to pieces like card houses. In
Il few thousand years there will be no
Great Dipper, no Orion with his club,
no Southern Cross. Tho heavens would
look like a new universe to one of us
who revisited tho earth in the ten
thousaudth century. Now, if we sup
pose that there are as many dark or
dead suns rs there are living ones, it is
! not difficult to believe that OCCASION
ally there might be collisions between
them. OF course, the chances against
any such collision would be very, very
great, and yet some of the eases Of stars
that have suddenly blnzed ont with
astonishing brilliancy and then disap-
peared may be accounted for in this
way. 10 show you that there is no
cNaggeration in what am saying about
the multitude of dead Suits in tho uni
verse, see what Sir John Lubbock said
in his inaugural address at tho meeting
of the British Association in August
last:
"'Thr floor of heaven ia not only
chick inlaid with pntiuca Of bright
gold but studded also with extinct
stars, once probably as brilliant as our
! own sun, but now dead and cold rs
| lIelmh oltH tells us that our sun itself
will be some 1000, 900 years hcncc.''
'sBut we need not wander Off in space
| in search of the slly's untomhcu dead
| We have right ut hand, circiing about
our own earth, not an extinct sun, but
Il dead world. The moon is dead, and
has been dead these million years
There the astronomer, if he fancies
himself the worlds surgeon, may study
the effects of Il matady that no surgery
| could cure. Even worlds aud suns
like men and women, grow old and
die but unlike men and women, they