A new "celestial body" has been sighted from the Lick
Obser- vatory, California. It is described as a " starlike object, cm.* tainly brighter than Venus, 3 deg. east, 1 deg. south of the sun. Chances are in favour of its being the nucleus of a bright comet and less probably a nova." For all modern scientific discovery and arrangement—this card-indexing of the skies—which might have been thought to have taken away the mystery of the heavens, there remains something strange, thrilling, portentous in the sudden appearance of some new bright star. Men have always connected the stars with their lives and thought to read the future above them. Perhaps it is some repressed atavistic instinct of this kind which gives us today so strange an interest in the skies. At any rate, he must be a dull man who will feel no interest in this new celestial visitant.
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