DWARFS AND GIANTS. 773 



Let us finish our argument with an imaginary illustration embody- 

 ing the principles and the consequences derived from them. An ad- 

 venturous explorer, visiting the countries in which Gulliver traveled, 

 brings back a Lilliputian and a Brobdingnagian. The giant is thirty 

 feet hisrh, the dwarf four inches. Since one is about a hundred times 

 as large as the other, their respective masses, and consequently the 

 masses of their muscles, must be in the proportion of a million to one. 

 If a common man weighs sixty kilogrammes, or 150 pounds, the Brob- 

 dingnagian should weigh 15,000 kilogrammes, or about 38,000 pounds, 

 and the Lilliputian only fifteen grammes. They agree to compete with 

 each other in the gymnasium. At the pulleys, the Brobdingnagian 

 can easily raise a weight of 10,000 kilogrammes, or 2,500 pounds, as 

 high as his shoulders. Looking to the Lilliputian, we would at first 

 sight not expect him to be able to raise more than ten grammes to his 

 shoulders. Pie really proves able to lift a hundred times as much, or 

 one kilogramme, or the equivalent of seventy-five times his weight. 

 This is because the distance to his shoulders is a hundred times less 

 than the distance to his rival's shoulders, and he is able to apply 

 against the weight the advantage which he derives from the relative 

 shortness of the distance. 



They next try leaping at the bar. The Lilliputian gracefully 

 clears the pole at a metre from the ground. Will the Brobdingnagian 

 be able to make a bound of a hundred metres ? Not at all. He can 

 hardly clear the bar at five or six metres. This is not because he is 

 lacking in suppleness. Compare his mass with that of his little rival, 

 consider that he has raised the center of gravity of that mass to the 

 height of about a metre as the other has done with that of his inferior 

 mass, and it will not be hard to do justice to his agility. 



They are next started on a foot-race. A course of a thousand 

 metres is laid out. The Brobdingnagian runs it in five minutes by 

 steps of four metres each per second. The Lilliputian's steps are only 

 four centimetres each, but he makes a hundred of them in a second ; 

 so he likewise goes over the track in five minutes. You give all praise 

 to the Lilliputian, but do an injustice to his competitor. Think of 

 what the giant has to do to move his legs ! They are a million times 

 as heavy as the Lilliputian's. But while he may have a million fibers, 

 or a thousand in the diameter of a transverse section, the Lilliputian 

 will have ten fibers in the corresponding diameter, or a thousand in all. 

 Thus, while the masses are in the proportion of a million to one, the 

 proportion as to the motive fibers is a million to a hundred. The 

 Lilliputian, then, has the advantage. It may be objected that a hun- 

 dred steps can hardly be made in a second. The objection is, how- 

 ever, only specious, for the wings of insects show us what is possible 

 in this matter. 



We are authorized by the aid of these illustrations to draw the im- 

 portant conclusion that the minute world is not, and can not be, in all 



