To assume, then, that our Sun, so identical to the stars in heat and light emitting properties, was the only Sun that had revolving around it a few minute balls, would be as absurd as if one should go on a pebbly beach, extending from Labrador to Florida for example, and picking up a single pebble, should have the hardihood to assert that this pebble was the only one, among the millions of pebbles, upon which would be found the bits of seaweed and little snails which it might support. The overwhelming vastness of the universe is entirely beyond the grasp of the human mind. The mere statement that it requires so many years for the light to reach us from a certain star, the parallax of which has been rudely established, affords one only a faint glimmer of the truth. The swing of our Earth about the Sun gives us a base line of 186,000,000 of miles, and yet, with this enormous base from which to subtend an angle, only a very few of the myriad of stars show the slightest displacement; the others exhibit no more signs of divergence than if while looking at them we had simply moved our heads from one side to the other! Fixed stars they appear to be, and are so called, though we are told they are all drifting in various directions, as our star-Sun is. Only by reducing all these vast distances and dimensions to a minute scale can the mind realize the futility of ever comprehending the illimitable distances of space. In order to consider the attitude of the Earth in relation to the Sun and the nearest fixed star, we will reduce the Sun's diameter of 866,000 miles to the dimensions of a ball one inch in diameter; the Earth reduced to the same scale would be a minute speck less than one one-hundredth of an inch in diameter; a perforation in paper made by the finest cambric needle would represent the size of this minute speck, the Earth. Following this scale we should place this speck nine feet from the inch ball, this distance representing 93,000,000 of miles, the Earth's distance from the Sun; Mars would be a still smaller speck a step farther off. Let us now proceed to Boston Common, for example, and on the smooth playground place our inch ball representing the Sun; taking three good steps we should place our minute speck, representing the Earth, upon the ground where it would be immediately lost in the fine gravel; another step and we would place a still smaller particle, representing Mars. How big a circle on the Earth's surface, using the inch ball as a centre, should we have to describe in order to include the nearest fixed star? Such a circle would reach to Detroit, Michigan, and Columbus, Ohio, or Wilmington, North Carolina! To find a circle which would include eight other fixed stars next in distance, and only eight of the thousands which render the heavens so beautiful on a clear winter's night--we should run such a circle through the centre of Hudson Bay, the waters of southern Greenland, Lake Winnipeg, and New Orleans!