looking upon their broad, level surfaces--as smooth, apparently, as
polished steel, though thirty thousand miles across--that they are in
reality vast circling currents of meteoritic particles or dust, through
which run immense waves, condensation and rarefaction succeeding one
another as in the undulations of sound. Yet, with all their inferential
tumult, they may actually be as soundless as the depths of interstellar
space, for Struve has shown that those spectacular rings possess no
appreciable mass, and, viewed from Saturn itself, their (to us) gorgeous
seeming bow may appear only as a wreath of shimmering vapor spanning the
sky and paled by the rivalry of the brighter stars.

In view of the theory of tidal action disrupting a satellite within a
critical distance from the center of its primary, the thoughtful
observer of Saturn will find himself wondering what may have been the
origin of the rings. The critical distance referred to, and which is
known as Roche's limit, lies, according to the most trustworthy
estimates, just outside the outermost edge of the rings. It follows that
if the matter composing the rings were collected into a single body that
body would inevitably be torn to pieces and scattered into rings; and
so, too, if instead of one there were several or many bodies of
considerable size occupying the place of the rings, all of these bodies
would be disrupted and scattered. If one of the present moons of
Saturn--for instance, Mimas, the innermost hitherto discovered--should
wander within the magic circle of Roche's limit it would suffer a
similar fate, and its particles would be disseminated among the rings.
One can hardly help wondering whether the rings have originated from the
demolition of satellites--Saturn devouring his children, as the ancient
myths represent, and encircling himself, amid the fury of destruction,
with the dust of his disintegrated victims. At any rate, the amateur
student of Saturn will find in the revelations of his telescope the
inspirations of poetry as well as those of science, and the bent of his
mind will determine which he shall follow.

Professor Pickering's discovery of a ninth satellite of Saturn, situated
at the great distance of nearly eight million miles from the planet,
serves to call attention to the vastness of the "sphere of activity"
over which the ringed planet reigns. Surprising as the distance of the
new satellite appears when compared with that of our moon,