nearly half a mile across; Saturn, a small orange, on a circle of
four-fifths of a mile; and Uranus, a full-sized cherry or small
plum, upon the circumference of a circle more than a mile
and a half in diameter. As to getting correct notions on this
subject by drawing circles on paper, or, still worse, from those
very childish toys called orreries, it is out of the question. To
imitate the motions of the planets in the above-mentioned
orbits, Mercury must describe its own diameter in 41 seconds;
Venus in 4m. 4s.; the Earth in 7m.; Mars in 4m. 48s.;
Jupiter in 2h. 56m.; Saturn in 3h. 13m.; and Uranus in
2h. 16m."

IS THE SUN INHABITED?

If (says Arago) this question were simply proposed to me,
Is the Sun inhabited? I should reply, that I know nothing
about the matter. But let any one ask of me if the sun can
be inhabited by beings organised in a manner analogous to
those which people our globe, and I hesitate not to reply in
the affirmative. The existence in the sun of a central obscure
nucleus, enveloped in an opaque atmosphere far beyond which
the luminous atmosphere exists, is by no means opposed, in
effect, to such a conception.

Herschel thought that the sun is inhabited. According to
him, if the depth of the solar atmosphere in which the lumi-
nous chemical action operates should amount to a million of
leagues, it is not necessary that the brightness at each point
should surpass that of an ordinary aurora borealis. In any
case, the arguments upon which the great astronomer relies,
in order to prove that the solar nucleus may not be very hot,
notwithstanding the incandescence of the atmosphere, are nei-
ther the only, nor the best, that might be adduced. The direct
observation, made by Father Secchi, of the depression of tem-
perature which the points of the solar disc experience wherein
the spots appear, is in this respect more important than any
reasoning whatever.

Dr. Elliott maintained, as early as the year 1787, that the light of
the sun arose from what he called a dense and universal twilight. He
further believed, with certain ancient philosophers, that the sun might
be inhabited. When the Doctor was brought before the Old Bailey for
having occasioned the death of Miss Boydell, his friends, Dr. Simmons
among others, maintained that he was mad, and thought that they
could prove it abundantly by showing the writings wherein the opinions
which we have just cited were found developed. The conceptions of a
madman are in the present day generally adopted.-Arago's Popular
Astronomy, vol. i. book xiv. chap. 29.

Sir John Herschel concludes that the sun is a planet abun-
dantly stored with inhabitants; his inference being drawn
from the following arguments:

On the tops of mountains of a sufficient height, at an altitude where

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form even 1-30th of the latter. Now the intensity of the atmospheric light being 1-500th of the light of the sun in the vicinity of that body, we see that the intensity of the flame of a wax-candle is only 1-30th x 1-500th, or the 15,000th part of the solar light.

The brightest light which man has been enabled to produce is that which has been named the electric light, which is engendered by the aid of the galvanic battery, the magnificent invention of Volta.

It is no exaggeration to assert that the electric light is comparable to the solar light; for if we project upon the sun's disc the light which is obtained by rendering incandescent two pieces of charcoal placed in communication with the two poles of a galvanic battery, we do not arrive at all at the result which is furnished by a wax-candle, or even a Carcel lamp. The electric light is not effaced in presence of that of the sun. According to the energy of the battery employed, we find that the electric light varies from the fifth part to the fourth of that of the sun; or, in other words, that it is equivalent to that diffused by a number of wax-candles varying between 3000 and 3750.

Let us add, that a Carcel lamp gives as much light as seven wax-candles; and that the light of a jet of gas is equal to that of nine wax-candles.

The reader will be pleased to remark, that we speak only of the brightness of the sun at the surface of the earth, and not of the intensity of the light of that body near its surface.Arago's Popular Astronomy, vol. i. book xiv. chap. 25.

THE NEARER THE SUN THE GREATER THE COLD.

This phenomenon is explained by the sunbeams bringing to the earth both light and heat as they descend to warm the hottest valleys or plains, and passing through the upper strata of the atmosphere, but leaving them always of a temperature much below freezing. This low temperature is proved by the fact, that all lofty mountains, even under the equator, are capped with never-melting snows; and that the higher the peaks are, though, therefore, the nearer to the sun, the colder they are. Thus aeronauts, in their balloon-car, if they mounted very high, would be frozen to death if not protected by very warm clothing. Another fact of the very same kind is, that a glass globe full of cold water, or even a ball of ice, will, in the sun's rays, act as a burning-lens.-Dr. Neil Arnott.

THE EARTH TRAVELLING ROUND THE SUN.

Mr. Samuel Warren thus illustrates our rate of transit through space in our journey round our central luminary,

KING ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE.

"And so great Arthur's seat ould Winchester prefers,
Whose ould round table yet she vaunteth to be hers."
DRAYTON'S Polyolbion.

Conspicuously upon the interior eastern wall of the County Hall at Winchester hangs the celebrated painted Table of King Arthur, the true history of which has long been a disputed question with antiquaries; but in 1845, when the Archæological Institute met at Winchester, a paper by Mr. E. Smirke was read upon this inquiry.

Tradition attributes the foundation of Winchester Castle to the renowned Prince Arthur; and the legendary bards affirm, that the large oaken table now shown as the chief curiosity of the place is the identical board around which that monarch and his celebrated knights assembled in the fortress he had founded: but the Exchequer Domesday shows that William I. erected the castle of Winchester in the situation in which exist its remains, including the County Hall, in which the Table hangs.

Mr. Smirke is not aware of any distinct reference to the Round Table before the reign of Henry VI. or Edward IV., when Hardyng, the poetic historian, alludes to the table of Arthur as "hanging yet" at Winchester; but this mention is not to be found in the earliest manuscript copy of Hardyng. Paulus Jovius informs us that the table was shown to the Emperor Charles V. on his visit to Winchester in 1522; and in the foreign accounts of Henry VIII. we find an entry of 667. 16s. 11d. for the repair of the "aula regis infra castrum de Wynchestre et le round tabyll ibidem." Again, the table is referred to by a Spanish writer who was present at the marriage of Philip and Mary, as the Round Table constructed by Merlin.

The Table, as we now see it, consists of a circle, divided into twentyfive green and white compartments radiating from the centre, which is a large double (Norman ?) rose. In the middle of the upper half of the circle, resting upon the rose, and extending to the double edge, is a canopied niche, in which is painted a regal figure, bearing the orb and sword, and wearing the royal crown. Around the centre rose is a circle inscribed with black-letter, except where it is broken by the base of the niche and the sitting king. There are also names inscribed in six of the white compartments, as well as in the circle around the compartments, of which however this circle is rather a continuation, in colour and form corresponding to the several divisions, each bearing a name. To what period these names are to be referred, Mr. Smirke leaves those to decide whose critical acquaintance with the cycle of the Round-Table romances will enable them to state the source from which the names are borrowed. But there is no doubt that, whatever retouching the table may have undergone (especially in the royal figure, which Mr. Smirke believes to have been repainted within the time of living memory), the form of the letters and general decorations of the table, even if we had no extrinsic evidence, would indicate a date not later nor much earlier than the reign of Henry VIII.

The table is made of very stout oak plank, and is larger than the roof and the floors of the rooms in the Eddystone Lighthouse, and considerably larger than the ground-plot of the parish church of St. Lawrence in the Isle of Wight.

THINGS

NOT GENERALLY KNOWN.

Marvels of the Heavens.

THE GREAT TRUTHS OF ASTRONOMY.

How difficult must these be for the uneducated to understand! "Tell a plain countryman," says Bishop Hall, “that the sun, or some higher or lesser star, is much bigger than his cart-wheel, or, at least, so many scores bigger than the whole earth, he laughs thee to scorn, as affecting admiration with a learned untruth; yet the scholar, by the eye of reason, doth as plainly see and acknowledge this truth as that his hand is bigger than his pen."

ANCIENT IDEAS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Far lower down than the times of astrology and alchemy was the age when this earth was thought the fixed centre of the universe and an extended plain,* and the heavenly bodies glittering specks revolving round it; and when the great Aristotle taught that the heavenly bodies were bound fast in spheres which revolved with them round our earth-the bodies themselves being motionless-the first sphere being that in which the fixed stars are placed; then the five planets; the sun; and, next to the earth, the moon: the earth itself being at rest, and the centre of the universe!-S. Warren, D.C.L.

MECHANICS OF ASTRONOMY.

Our acquaintance with the sublime truths of Astronomy would have been as deep had Eastern philosophers never turned

*This notion is not yet apparently banished from among ourselves even. "I remember," says the present Astronomer Royal, "a man in my youth-my friend was in his inquiries an ingenious man, a sort of philosopher-who used to say he should like to go to the edge of the earth and look over." Airy's Lectures on Astronomy, p. 46, 2d edition, 1848.

B