470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their true proportions. Yet this is a little more than the one-hundredth 

 part of our distance from the sun, from which we get the light and heat 

 on which our lives depend. What, then, shall we say of those sidereal 

 spaces to measure which this solar distance is taken as the unit ! The 

 astronomer contemplates magnitudes and distances and motions ex- 

 pressed by figures of such vast array, that the power of enumeration is 

 almost staggered, and our capacity to comprehend values is altogether 

 overwhelmed by them. But let us reduce the unit of measure from 

 the mile to the inch, and then let us take the reciprocals of these enor- 

 mous values obtained by the astronomer in his study of the planetary 

 composition of the universe, and we shall have before us the order of 

 measurements which engage the attention of the physicist who studies 

 the molecular composition of matter. If we are not dismayed by the 

 one, let us not be by the other. In one case our conceptions are pic- 

 tures in miniature ; in the other they must be pictures enlarged. But 

 it is no more difficult to picture the distance between two minute 

 bodies, when measured by the hundred-millionths of an inch, than it is 

 to picture it between two greater ones when measured by the hundred 

 millions of miles. To comprehend the real magnitude is, in both cases, 

 impossible, and our belief in the existence of either must depend on 

 our faith in the infallibility of mathematical processes and on the ob- 

 servations upon which they are based. But granting the existence of 

 such evidence to sustain it, neither can be called incredible, however 

 it may transcend our comprehension, for credulity consists, not in be- 

 lieving, but believing without evidence. 



-++- 



NEUTER INSECTS. 



By PHILIP WOOLF, M. D. 



HOW the workers of many insects became sterile is an interesting 

 question, though one difficult to answer. Those who believe in 

 special creation solve this problem, as they solve so many other diffi- 

 culties, by stating that insects are sterile because they were created 

 sterile. The majority of educated persons, however, require to be con- 

 vinced by some more tangible argument ; the conclusion that things 

 are because they are, having lost the only merit it ever possessed, the 

 annihilation of thought. 



To state the problem that all may understand it : there are many 

 insects, as the bees, ants, wasps, and termites, that are divided into 

 three castes, males, females, and workers ; the latter are sterile, and it 

 is asked how, according to modern theory, these workers can have 

 arisen? It is said that, since they do not propagate their kind, no 

 spontaneous variations can be produced for natural selection to work 



