against which the wind is driving drifts of powdery snow, which, while
scattered plentifully all around, tends to bank itself on the leeward
side of the obstruction. The imagination is at a loss to account for
these extraordinary phenomena; yet there they are, faithfully giving
us their images whenever the photographic plate is exposed to their
radiations.

Thus the more we see of the universe with improved methods of
observation, and the more we invent aids to human senses, each
enabling us to penetrate a little deeper into the unseen, the greater
becomes the mystery. The telescope carried us far, photography is
carrying us still farther; but what as yet unimagined instrument will
take us to the bottom, the top, and the end? And then, what hitherto
untried power of thought will enable us to comprehend the meaning of
it all?

Stellar Migrations

To the untrained eye the stars and the planets are not
distinguishable. It is customary to call them all alike ``stars.'' But
since the planets more or less rapidly change their places in the sky,
in consequence of their revolution about the sun, while the stars
proper seem to remain always in the same relative positions, the
latter are spoken of as ``fixed stars.'' In the beginnings of
astronomy it was not known that the ``fixed stars'' had any motion
independent of their apparent annual revolution with the whole sky
about the earth as a seeming center. Now, however, we know that the
term ``fixed stars'' is paradoxical, for there is not a single really
fixed object in the whole celestial sphere. The apparent fixity in the
positions of the stars is due to their immense distance, combined with