Motions of the Earth

Taken from "Things Not Generally Known" by John Timbs, David Ames Wells ©1857

MOTION OF THE EARTH AROUND THE SUN.

The motion of the earth around the sun in round numbers is 68,805 miles per hoar,—so that while we are reading, or cogitating npon this statement, we are at the same time whirling along at a velocity of more than a thousand miles a minute, and nineteen miles between two beats of a pendnlnm, or in a second of time. The motion of Mercury in its orbit is much greater, being upwards of 100,000 miles per hour. If we are disposed to regard this as a rapid motion round the sun, what must the inhabitants of Neptune, who travel only three and a half miles a second, think of us, who are whirling round the sun at six times the speed of Neptune!

THE THREE MOTIONS OF THE EARTH.

The Earth is believed by all astronomers to have, at this moment, not two motions only, but three !—one round its axis, which one can make evident to the very eye; another round the sun ; but what of the third? A most remarkable, and equally mysterious fact; that the sun and all his planets are moving with prodigious velocity through space at the rate of a hundred and fifty millions of miles a-year, towards a particular point in the heavens, a star [X] in the constellation Hercules!