Our sitting-rooms need never be empty of guests or our libraries of society if the company of good books is admitted to them.
REMARKABLE CALCULATIONS REGARDING THE SUN.
The sun's average distance from the earth is about 91,500,000 miles. Since the orbit of the earth is elliptical, and the sun is situated at one of its foci, the earth is nearly 3,000,000 miles further from the sun in aphelion than in perihelion. As we attempt to locate the heavenly bodies in space, we are immediately startled by the enormous figures employed. The first number, 91,500,000 miles, is far beyond our grasp. Let us try to comprehend it. If there were air to convey a sound from the sun to the earth, and a noise could be made loud enough to pass that distance it would require over fourteen years for it to come to us. Suppose a railroad could be built to the sun. An express train traveling day and night at the rate of thirty miles an hour, would require 341 years to reach its destination. Ten generations would be born and would die; the young men would become gray haired, and their great-grandchildren would forget the story of the beginning of that wonderful journey, and could find it only in history, as we now read of Queen Elizabeth or of Shakespeare; the eleventh generation would see the solar depot at the end of the route. Yet this enormous distance of 91,500,000 miles is used as the unit for expressing celestial distances—as the foot-rule for measuring space; and astronomers speak of so many times the sun's distance as we speak of so many feet or inches.
SIGNS OF STORMS APPROACHING.—A ring around the sun or moon stands for an approaching storm, its near or distant approach being indicated by its larger or smaller circumference. When the sun rises brightly and immediately afterward becomes veiled with clouds, the farmer distrusts the day. Rains which begin early in the morning often stop by nine in place of "eleven," the hour specified in the old saw, "If it rains before seven."
On a still, quiet day, with scarcely the least wind afloat, the ranchman or farmer can tell the direction of impending storm by cattle sniffing the air in the direction whence it is coming. Lack of dew in summer is a rain sign. Sharp white frosts in autumn and winter precede damp weather, and we will stake our reputation as a prophet that three successive white frosts are an infallible sign of rain. Spiders do not spin their webs out of doors before rain. Previous to rain flies sting sharper, bees remain in their hives or fly but short distances, and almost all animals appear uneasy.
HOW TO DISTINGUISH GOOD MEAT FROM BAD MEAT.
1st. It is neither of a pale pink color nor of a deep purple tint, for the former is a sign of disease, and the latter indicates that the animal has not been slaughtered, but has died with the blood in it, or has suffered from acute fever.
2d. It has a marked appearance from the ramifications of little veins of fat among the muscles.
3d. It should be firm and elastic to the touch and should scarcely moisten the fingers—bad meat being wet and sodden and flabby with the fat looking like jelly or wet parchment.
4th. It should have little or no odor, and the odor should not be disagreeable, for diseased meat has a sickly cadaverous smell, and sometimes a smell of physic. This is very discoverable when the meat is chopped up and drenched with warm water.