Читать книгу Star-land: Being Talks With Young People About the Wonders of the Heavens онлайн

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I began this lecture about forty minutes ago, and I think from what I have said you will be able to calculate a result that will, I dare say, astonish you. In these forty minutes we have moved about 45,000 miles. No doubt my lecture commenced in this hall, and in your presence; but can I truly say I began it here? Well, no; I began it not here, but at a place 45,000 miles away; but we have all been travelling together, and the journey has been so very smooth and free from all jolts, that we never thought anything about the motion.

I am sure many of those to whom I am now speaking have read accounts of voyages in the Arctic regions. You have been told of the sufferings of the crews during the long winters, amid the ice and snow; and you have heard how, during that dismal period, there is total darkness, for the sun never rises for weeks and months together. On the other hand, these northern regions often present a more cheerful picture. During midsummer, the long darkness of winter is atoned for by perpetual sunshine. At midnight there is still the full brilliance of day, and the sun, though low, no doubt, has not passed below the horizon. Even in the northerly parts of Europe we can see the midnight sun. Lord Dufferin, in his delightful narrative of a cruise, entitled “Letters from High Latitudes,” gives an interesting illustration of the perplexities arising from endless daylight. It appears that everything went on happily until the fatal moment when the yacht crossed the Arctic circle. Then it was that dire tribulation arose among the poultry. A fine cock was the cause of the trouble. Knowing his duty, he always liked to be particular about performing the important task of crowing at sunrise. This he could do regularly, so long as the yacht remained in reasonable latitudes, where the sun behaved properly. But when they crossed the Arctic circle, the cock was confronted with a wholly new experience. The sun never set in the evening, and consequently never had to rise in the morning. What was the distracted bird to do? He did everything. He burst into occasional fits of terrific crowing at all sorts of hours, then he gave up crowing altogether, but finding that did not mend matters, he took to crowing incessantly. Exhaustion was succeeded by delirium, and rather than live any longer in a universe where the sun was capable of pranks so heartless, the indignant fowl flung himself from the vessel and perished in the Arctic Ocean.