millions of miles away on the face of the sun; nay more, it will
read for you the nature of the different gases in the far distant
stars, billions of miles away, and actually tell you whether you
could find there any of the same metals which we have on the
earth.

We might find hundreds of such fairy tales in the domain of
science, but these three will serve as examples, and we much pass
on to make the acquaintance of the science-fairies themselves,
and see if they are as real as our old friends.

Tell me, why do you love fairy-land? what is its charm? Is it
not that things happen so suddenly, so mysteriously, and without
man having anything to do with it? In fairy-land, flowers blow,
houses spring up like Aladdin's palace in a single night, and
people are carried hundreds of miles in an instant by the touch
of a fairy wand.

And then this land is not some distant country to which we can
never hope to travel. It is here in the midst of us, only our
eyes must be opened or we cannot see it. Ariel and Puck did not
live in some unknown region. On the contrary, Ariel's song is

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly,
After summer, merrily."

The peasant falls asleep some evening in a wood and his eyes are