58 HISTORY OF BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 



numbered by billions^ trillions, and quadrillions. These are 

 numbers that we can pronounce very glibly with the tongue, 

 without attaching to the words any adequate idea of the 

 immense multitudes of living creatures we are at the time 

 speaking of. A friend of mine, on hearing his son, who 

 had got some lessons in arithmetic, go very trippingly over 

 his enumeration table, said to him, " George, you deal in 

 mighty numbers; have you any idea of the meaning of 

 these high-sounding words you are pronouncing ? You 

 seem quite familiar with quadrillions : for how much will 

 you count for me a quadrillion of these peas, which I am 

 now sowing in the garden ?" " I will do it," said George, 

 who was an off-hand lad, and thought he was making a 

 good bargain with his father, — " V\\ do it for twopence." 

 George was safe had he known it ; for he had only to make 

 the reasonable demand that the materiel on wliich his 

 arithmetical labours were to be exercised, should be pro- 

 duced, and his father must have owned that he could not 

 furnish it; but George was glad to back out from the 

 bargain, on being shown that though he were to live a hun- 

 dred years, and spend every moment of this long life in 

 the monotonous work, death would overtake the aged pulse- 

 counter, when the ill-paid reckoning was scarcely begun. 



