He replied that he was checking his calculations that he found to be quite correct, an exact period of two hundred and fifty thousand years having gone by since he laid himself down to sleep.

Then, by aid of the plates, he pointed out to me certain alterations that had happened during that period in the positions of some of the stars.
For instance, he showed me one which, by help of my glasses, I recognised as Sirius, and remarked that two hundred and fifty thousand years ago it was further away and much smaller.

Now it was precisely in the place and of the size which he had predicted, and he pointed to it on his prophetic map.

Again he indicated a star that the night-glass told me was Capella, which, I suppose, is one of the most brilliant stars in the sky, and showed me that on the map he had made two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, it did not exist, as then it was too far north to appear thereon.

Still, he observed, the passage of this vast period of time had produced but little effect upon the face of the heavens.