We published the other day some speculations on one of
the most startling of astronomical facts, the explosion, or rather the conflagration of Tau Corona. It appears that another and much more important star is slowly taking itself out of our system. By calculations of extraordinary minuteness and delicacy Mr. Huggins and Father Secehi have demonstrated that Sirius and our sun are mutually receding from one another at the rate of 29-4 miles per second. In the end, therefore, though the distance of time strains the imagination, we must lose sight of Sirius— that is to say, provided we have not by that time gained the capacity of watching the more distant universes towards which he must be receding,—an improbability. Nothing seems so near its final limit as the power of astronomical telescopes, while the power of the human eye, if it alters at all, probably decreases. Savages see better than the civilized, and while " short-eight" spreads like a disease, "long-eight" does not.
