NOTE BY THE AUTHOR--Itinerant Lecturers are cautioned against
making use of the above production, without obtaining the necessary
authority from the proprietors of the Pioneer Magazine. To those
who may obtain such authority, it may be well to state that at the
close of the Lecture it was the intention of the author to exhibit
and explain to the audience an orrery, accompanying and
interspersing his remarks by a choice selection of popular airs on
the hand-organ.
An economical orrery may be constructed by attaching eighteen wires
of graduated lengths to the shaft of a candlestick, apples of
different sizes being placed at their extremities to represent the
Planets, and a central orange resting on the candlestick,
representing the Sun.
An orrery of this description is, however, liable to the objection
that if handed around among the audience for examination, it is
seldom returned uninjured. The author has known an instance in
which a child four years of age, on an occasion of this kind,
devoured in succession the planets Jupiter and Herschel, and bit a
large spot out of the Sun before he could be arrested.