Then, too, there is a
certain interest for us in the thought of what our familiar planet has
passed through. We cannot but admire it for its long journeying as we
admire the traveler who comes to us from remote and unexplored lands,
or as we gaze with a glow of interest upon the first locomotive that
has crossed a continent, or a ship that has visited the Arctic or
Antarctic regions. If we may trust the indications of the present
course, the earth, piloted by the sun, has come from the Milky Way in
the far south and may eventually rejoin that mighty band of stars in
the far north.
While the stars in general appear to travel independently of one
another, except when they are combined in binary or trinary systems,
there are notable exceptions to this rule. In some quarters of the sky
we behold veritable migrations of entire groups of stars whose members
are too widely separated to show any indications of revolution about a
common center of gravity. This leads us back again to the wonderful
group of the Pleiades. All of the principle stars composing that group
are traveling in virtually parallel lines. Whatever force set them
going evidently acted upon all alike. This might be explained by the
assumption that when the original projective force acted upon them
they were more closely united than they are at present, and that in
drifting apart they have not lost the impulse of the primal motion.
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