REMARKABLE CALCULATIONS REGARDING THE SUN.
The sun's average distance from the earth is about 91,500,000 miles.
Since the orbit of the earth is elliptical, and the sun is situated at
one of its foci, the earth is nearly 3,000,000 miles further from
the sun in aphelion than in perihelion. As we attempt to locate the
heavenly bodies in space, we are immediately startled by the enormous
figures employed. The first number, 91,500,000 miles, is far beyond
our grasp. Let us try to comprehend it. If there were air to convey a
sound from the sun to the earth, and a noise could be made loud enough
to pass that distance it would require over fourteen years for it to
come to us. Suppose a railroad could be built to the sun. An express
train traveling day and night at the rate of thirty miles an hour,
would require 341 years to reach its destination. Ten generations
would be born and would die; the young men would become gray haired,
and their great-grandchildren would forget the story of the beginning
of that wonderful journey, and could find it only in history, as we
now read of Queen Elizabeth or of Shakespeare; the eleventh generation
would see the solar depot at the end of the route. Yet this enormous
distance of 91,500,000 miles is used as the unit for expressing
celestial distances--as the foot-rule for measuring space; and
astronomers speak of so many times the sun's distance as we speak of
so many feet or inches.
SIGNS OF STORMS APPROACHING.
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