NATURAL THEOLOGY. 21 



(*) II. Another thing, in which a choice appears 

 to be exercised, and in which, amongst the possi- 

 bilities out of which the choice was to be made, 

 the number of those which were wrong bore an 

 infinite proportion to the number of those which 

 were right, is in what geometricians call the axis 

 of rotation. This matter I will endeavour to ex- 

 plain. The earth, it is well known, is not an exact 

 globe, but an oblate spheroid, something like an 

 orange. Now the axes of rotation, or the diame- 

 ters upon which such a body may be made to turn 

 round, are as many as can be drawn through its 

 centre to opposite points upon its whole surface ; 

 but of these axes none are ijermanent, except either 

 its shortest diameter, i. e. that which passes through 

 the heart of the orange from the place where the 

 stalk is inserted into it, and which is but one ; or 

 its longest diameters, at right angles with the for- 

 mer, which must all terminate in the single circum- 

 ference which goes round the thickest part of the 

 orange. The shortest diameter is that upon which 

 in fact the earth turns, and it is, as the reader sees, 

 what it ought to be, a permanent axis ; whereas, 

 had blind chance, had a casual impulse, had a 

 stroke or push at random, set the earth a-spinning, 



as she is seen in different positions ; one a half-moon, and in the 

 other hke a crescent. Tliese appearances are called phases, from 

 the Greek, and she is the brightest of all the planets. The bulk. 

 of Jupiter is 1281 times greater than that of the Earth, of Saturn 

 995 times ; while that of Venus is nine-tenths, and that of Mars 

 one half the Earth's bulk. The bulk of the Sun itself is 1,367,000 

 limes that of the earth. 



