Page:New lands - (IA newlands00fort).pdf/60

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50
NEW LANDS

as we will―there's the buzz of the bars that encircle us. The concoction that has caged us is one of the most brilliant harlots in modern prostitution: we're imprisoned at the pleasure of a favorite in the harem of the God of Gravitation. That's some relief: language always is―but how are we to "determine" that the rings of Saturn do not move as they "ought" to, and thereby add more to the discrediting of spectroscopy in astronomy?

A gleam on a planet that's like shine on a sword to deliver us―

The White Spot of Saturn—

A bright and shining deliverer.

There's a gleam that will shatter concoctions and stop velocities. There's a shining thing on the planet Saturn, and the blow that it shines is lightning. Thus far has gone a revolution of 10.1 miles a second, but it stops by magic against magic; no farther buzzes a revolution of 12.4 miles a second—that the rings of Saturn may not move as, to flatter one little god they "ought" to, because, by the handiwork of Universality, they may be motionless.

Often has a white spot been seen upon the rings of Saturn: by Schmidt, Bond, Secchi, Schroeter, Harding, Schwabe, De Vico―a host of other astronomers.

It is stationary.

In the English Mechanic, 49-195, Thomas Gwyn Elger publishes a sketch of it as he saw it upon the nights of April 18 and 20, 1889. It occupied a position partly upon one ring and partly upon the other, showing no distortion. Let Prof. Keeler straddle two concentric merry-go-rounds, whirling at different velocities: there will be d istortion. See vol. 49, English Mechanic, for observation after observation by astronomers upon this appearance, when seen for several months in the year 1889, the observers agreeing that, no matter what are the demands of theory, this fixed spot did indicate that the rings of Saturn do not move.

The White Spot on Saturn has blasted minor magic. He has little, black retainers who now function in the cause of completeness―the little, black spots of Saturn―

Nature, 53-109:

That, in July and August, 1895, Prof. Mascari, of the Catania