The Southern Cross

If Job were to rise from the dead and look npon the heavens, says Professor T. J. J. See in The Atlantic, he would see the constellations reiated to one another aa of old, but he would flnd that the pole had shifted its position among the stars, and if an immortal could witness the grand phenomenon which the precession of the equinoxes produces in about 12,900 years he would find the heavens eo altered that the former aspect could be recognized only by an understanding of the changes which had intervened. As Humboldt justly remarks, the beautiful and celebrated constellation of the Southern Cross, never 6een by the present inhabitants of Europe and visible in the United States only on our southern coast, formerly shone on the shores of the Baltic, and can again be seen in that latitude in about 18,000 years. The cross will then be visible on the shores of Hudson bay, but at present it is going rapidly southward, and in a few thousand years will be invisible even at the extreme point of Florida. In like nianner the brilliant star Canopus in the constellation Argo, situated some 37 degrees south of Sirius, is now visible in the southern portion of the United States. In about 1 2, 000 years it will cease to rise even in Central America. From the same cause, if Ptolemy were to again look upon the heavens at Alexandria, he would be unable to recognize Alpha and Beta Centauri, which he easily saw and catalogued in the time of Hadrian. At present these niagnificent stars are just visible at the pyramids, netu Cairo, and in a few more thousand years they can be seen by dwellers on the Nlle only in upper Egypt.