184 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



ment I have spoken of above with all their good 

 management. 



I sat down, only to make a few remarks? in re- 

 ply to those most excellent communications of 

 Rivanna, K., and my friend C. Braxton, and I 

 find I have made a long, atul I am afraid ledious 

 communication. It" you think proper, you will 

 please publish it in your most usefiil Register. 

 Most sincerely yours. 



Hill Cahter. 



Shirley^ March 8th, 1840. 



AN IDEA OF THE UNIVERSE. 



From the N. Y. Journal of Commerce. 



IntheChristain Keepsake for the current seasnn, 

 among a very creditable varieiy ol'articles furnish- 

 ed for that beautiful annunl by British writers, is a 

 splendid essay by the distiniruishpd Dr. Thomas 

 Dick, so well known in this country, by his works 

 on various subjects kindreii to that indicated by the 

 heading above. The length of (his es.^ay makes 

 it impossible to cite much of it in ourcolunms, and 

 as the volume itself will reach comparatively li^w 

 ofour readers, we have concluded to give them 

 the doctor's leadings notions in our own words. 



He begins with what the senses of man com- 

 mand around him in the way of a landscape, and 

 comparing this little space with what is immedi- 

 ately around us on all sides, observes that it would 

 be requisite — taking the general average of a 

 pretty extensive landscape — that more than nine 

 hundred thousand landscapes of the extent we 

 generally behold, should pass before our view, 

 ere we could form an adequate conception of the 

 bulk of the whole earth. The surface of the 

 globe, he eays, contains no less than 197 millions 

 of square miles. No human mind can form a 

 conception of this. 



The earth, however, is but an inconsiderable 

 ball when compared with other planets ofour sys- 

 tem. One of these bodies could contain within 

 its dimensions nine hundred globes as large as 

 the earth; another fourteen hundred; and were 

 five hundred globes as large as that on which we 

 dwell, laid upon a vast plane, the outermost rinsr 

 of the planet Saturn, which is six hundred and 

 forty-three thousand miles in circumference, 

 would enclose ihem all. And yet these bodies 

 seem only small bright specks on the concave of 

 our sky. 



Again— earth, planets, comets, and all— -the 

 whole subordinate solar system — how small it is, 

 compared with its central luminary. No intel- 

 lect can reach to the slightest conception of such 

 a body. The sun is five hundred times larger 

 than the whole, and would contain within its cir- 

 cumference thirteen hundred thousand globes 

 as large as our world. To contemplate all the 

 variety of scenery on the surface of this luminary 

 would require more than fifty thousand years. 

 although a landscape five thousand miles in extent 

 were to pass before our eyes every hour. What 

 a scope were this for the explorations of intellect 

 and imagination throughout eternity ! 



But this system, with its sun, is but a point in 

 the firmament. Before we could arrive at the 

 nearest object in this firmament, we should have 

 to pass over a space at least twenty billions of 



miles in extent — a space which a cannon ball 

 flying with its utmost velocity, would not pass 

 over in less than lour millions of years. What 

 hosts of orbs are visible here of a winter's night! 

 How vast must they be ! There is every reason 

 to believe, that the least twinkling star which our 

 eyes can discern, is not less than our sun in mag- 

 nitude and glory, and that many of them are even 

 a hundred or a thousand times superior in mag- 

 nitude to that stupendous luminary. And as the 

 Creator does nothing in vain, as he must be sup- 

 posed always to act in the plenitude of his per- 

 fections, those thousands stars, which the unas- 

 sisted eye can perceive in the canopy of heaven 

 may be considered as connected with at least fif- 

 ty thousand worlds, compared with the amount of 

 whose population, all the inhabitants of our globe 

 would appear only as "the email dust in the 

 balance." Here the imagination might expatiate 

 for ages of ages, in surveying this position of the 

 Creator's kingdom, and be lost in contemplation 

 and wonder at the vast extent, the magnitude, 

 and the immense variety of scenes, objects, and 

 movements, which would meet the view in every 

 direction. For here we have presented to our 

 view, not only single suns and single systems, such 

 as that to which we belong, but suns revolving 

 around suns and systems around systems — systems 

 not only double, but triple, quadruple, quintuple, 

 and all in complicated but harmonious motions — 

 motion — more rapid than the swiftest planets in 

 in our system, though some of them move a hun- 

 dred thousand miles in an hour — periods of revolu- 

 tions which vary from thirty to sixteen hundred 

 years — suns with a blue or green lustre revolving 

 around suns of a white or a ruddy color, and both 

 of them illuminating toith contrasted colored light 

 the same assemblages of worlds. And if the 

 various orders of intelligences were unveiled to 

 our view, what a scene of interest, grandeur, 

 variety, diversity of intellect, and of wonder and 

 astonishment, would be open to our view ! 



And still we should be on the verge of creation ! 

 The visible is as nothing compared to the invisible. 

 The milky-way is found to consist of clusters of 

 stars ; and the late Sir W. Herschel in passing hia 

 telescope along a space of this zone, fifteen de- 

 grees long and two broad, descried at least fifty 

 thousand stars large enough to be distinctly count- 

 ed ; besides which he suspected twice aa many 

 more, which could be seen only now and then by 

 faint glimpses, (or want of sufficient light ; that is, 

 fifteen times more than the acutest eye can discern 

 in the whole heavens, during the clearest night ; 

 and the space which they occupy is only the 

 l-1375ih part of the visiblecanopy ofthesky. On 

 another occasion, this astronomer perceived nearly 

 six hundred stars in one field of view of his tele- 

 scope, so that in the space of a quarter of an hour, 

 one hundred and sixteen thousand stars passed in 

 review before him. Now, were we to suppose 

 every part of this zone equally filled with stars as 

 the spaces now alluded to, there would be found in 

 the milky-way alone, no less than 20,190,000, that 

 is, twenty millions, one hundred and ninety thou- 

 sand stars, or twenty thousand times the number 

 ofthose that are visible to the naked eye. In 

 regard to the distance ofsome of these stars, it has 

 been ascertained that some of the more remote are 

 not less than five hundred times the distance of 

 the nearest fixed star, that is, at least 9,940,000, 



