was more than seven times as far as Sirius, nearly fourteen times as
far as Alpha Centauri, three times as far as Vega, and twice as far as
Arcturus. But some geologists demand two hundred, three hundred, even
one thousand million years to enable them to account for the
evolutionary development of the earth and its inhabitants. In a
thousand million years the earth would have traveled farther than from
the remotest conceivable depths of the Milky Way!

Other curious reflections arise when we think of the form of the
earth's track as it follows the lead of the sun, in a journey which
has neither known beginning nor conceivable end. There are probably
many minds which have found a kind of consolation in the thought that
every year the globe returns to the same place, on the same side of
the sun. This idea may have an occult connection with our traditional
regard for anniversaries. When that period of the year returns at
which any great event in our lives has occurred we have the feeling
that the earth, in its annual round, has, in a manner, brought us back
to the scene of that event. We think of the earth's orbit as a
well-worn path which we traverse many times in the course of a
lifetime. It seems familiar to us, and we grow to have a sort of
attachment to it. The sun we are accustomed to regard as a fixed
center in space, like the mill or pump around which the harnessed
patient mule makes his endless circuits. But the real fact is that the
earth never returns to the place in space where it has once quitted.
In consequence of the motion of the sun carrying the earth and the
other planets along, the track pursued by our globe is a vast spiral
in space continually developing and never returning upon its course.
It is probable that the tracks of the sun and the others stars are
also irregular, and possibly spiral, although, as far as can be at
present determined, they appear to be practically straight. Every