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It has appeared to me that the report drawn up in the name of a committee of one of the three great powers of the State might worthily close this series of biographical notices of eminent astronomers.
Now if our space is curved in higher space, since such curvature is at present undetectable by us, we must assume, as Hinton chose to assume, that it curves in the minute, or, as some astronomers assume, that its curve is vast.
I heard the Alexandrians praised for their hospitality for the ardor with which they pursue learning for the great proficiency of their astronomers for the piety which has raised so many altars and invented so many doctrines; and, lastly, for the beauty and fine wit of their women. "And this hospitality!
One-half of this, or 23 degrees 5, 19.5", represented the obliquity of the ecliptic that is to say, the angle by which the earth's axis dipped from the perpendicular with reference to its orbit. This was a most important observation, and because of its accuracy it has served modern astronomers well for comparison in measuring the trifling change due to our earth's slow, swinging wobble.
The Spanish commissioners very recently would have placed the divisional line at the point where the Apoporis falls into the Jupura, while the Portuguese astronomers carried it back as far as Salto Grande. The Rio Negro and the Jupuro are two tributary streams of the Amazon, and may be compared in length to the Danube.
It was the period of those funnel-shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such nice mathematical proportions, from the waist down, that it seemed they must have emanated from the brains of astronomers, like the orbits, and diameters, and other things belonging to the heavenly bodies. Pupasse could not have come within three feet of the wall with her hoop-skirt distended.
In other words, it is not wise to draw too fine a line between a gaseous nebula and one consisting of solid particles with gas. The more important question is: How do astronomers conceive the condensation of this mixed mass of cosmic dust?
Part of this belief still exists; but the comet is no longer looked upon as the sign, but the agent of destruction. So lately as in the year 1832 the greatest alarm spread over the Continent of Europe, especially in Germany, lest the comet, whose appearance was then foretold by astronomers, should destroy the earth. The danger of our globe was gravely discussed.
Astronomers, we must allow, have graced these pretended seas with at least odd names, which science has respected up to the present time. Michel Ardan was right when he compared this map to a "Tendre card," got up by a Scudary or a Cyrano de Bergerac.
When the whole town slept, Copernicus watched the heavens, and made minute records of his observations. He had brought with him from Rome copies made by himself from the works of the prominent Greek astronomers, and the "Almagest" of Ptolemy he knew by heart.
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