amination of the observations made by him at the Cape, he determined
the parallax of Alpha Centauri to be 1''.16, but later astronomers have
reduced it to 0''.75.

Professor Henderson's detection of the parallax of Alpha Centauri was
communicated to the Astronomical Society two months after Bessel
announced his determination of the parallax of 61 Cygni.

The parallax of 61 Cygni assigns to the star a distance of forty
billions of miles from the Earth, and that of Alpha Centauri--regarded
as the nearest star to our system--a distance of twenty-five billions of
miles.

It is utterly beyond the capacity of the human mind to form any adequate
conception of those vast distances, even when measured by the velocity
with which the ether of space is thrilled into light. Light, which
travels twelve millions of miles in a minute, requires 4-1/3 years to
cross the abyss which intervenes between Alpha Centauri and the Earth,
and from 61 Cygni the period required for light to reach our globe is
rather less than double that time.

The parallax of more than a dozen other stars has been determined, and
the light passage of a few of the best known is estimated as
follows:--Sirius, eight years; Procyon, twelve; Altair, sixteen;
Aldebaran, twenty-eight; Capella, thirty; Regulus, thirty-five; Polaris,
sixty-three; and Vega, ninety-six years.

It does not always follow that the brightest stars are those situated
nearest to our system, though in a general way this may be regarded as
correct. The diminishing magnitudes of the stars can be accounted for
mainly by their increased distances, rather than by any difference in
their intrinsic brilliancy. We should not err by inferring that the most
minute stars are also the most remote; the telescope revealing thousands
that are invisible to the naked eye. There are, however, exceptions to
this general rule, and there are many stars of small magnitude less
remote than those whose names have been enumerated, and whose light
passage testifies to their profound distances and surpassing magnitude
when compared with that of our Sun.

Sirius, 'the leader of the heavenly host,' is distant fifty billions of
miles. The orb shines with a brilliancy far surpassing that of the Sun,
and greatly exceeds him in mass and dimensions. Arcturus, the bright
star in Booetes, whose golden yellow light renders it such a conspicuous
object, is so far distant that its measurement gives no reliable
parallax; and if we