32 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE DRANOLOGICAL 



first ray of light. All attempts to bring such numerical re- 

 lations home to our imaginations fail, either from the vast- 

 ness of the unit of measure employed, or from the vastness 

 of the number of its repetitions. Bessel said very truly ( 58 ) 

 "that the distance which light travels in one year can no more 

 be rendered sensible to us than the distance which it tra- 

 verses in ten years : no endeavours to bring home to our ima- 

 gination a magnitude far exceeding all magnitudes accessible 

 on the earth are ever successful." We find the oppressive 

 power of numbers exceeding what our conceptions can grasp, 

 alike in the smallest organized beings of animal life, and in 

 the galaxy of self-luminous suns which we term fixed stars. 

 What a mass of Polythalamia are contained, according to 

 Ehrenberg, in a thin stratum of chalk ! Of the microscopic 

 Gaillonella distans, according to the same great inquirer into 

 nature, a cubic inch of the Bilin polishing slate, which forms 

 a dome 40 feet high, contains 41000 millions of individuals. 

 Of Gaillonella ferruginea, one cubic inch contains upwards of 

 1 billion 750000 millions. ( 59 ) Such estimations remind 

 us of the Arenarius (\lsappiTijc) of Archimedes, of the grains 

 of sand which might fill Space ! If, in considering the 

 starry heavens,, impressions of vast magnitudes in space and 

 time, which numbers convey but imperfectly, remind man of 

 liis smallness of stature, his physical weakness, and the ephe- 

 meral duration of his earthly existence, he is, on the other 

 hand, cheered and invigorated by the consciousness, that the 

 application and development of the human intellect have 

 already made known to him such important portions of the 

 subjection of nature to definite laws, and so much of the 

 sidereal order of the universe 



If we assume that the spaces between the heavenly bodies 



