THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 63 
of the earth. Our earth revolves around the sun, as you all 
know, in 36544 days, or one of our years, but Saturn takes 
much longer, viz., 29% of our years to complete the revolution 
a1ound the sun, and whirling at the speed of hundreds of miles 
per menute. 
The outside diameter of the exterior ring is 204,800 miles, 
which is nearly 26 times the diameter of the earth; the inside 
diameter of the exterior ring is about 190,200 miles, leaving the 
width of the dark space between the outer and inner ring about 
2,839 miles, large enough for our moon to pass through . 
The outside diameter if the interior ring is 184,400 miles, 
and the inside diameter is 146,300. The width of the exterior 
ring is about 7,200 miles, and the width of the interior ring is 
about 20,000 miles. The interior ring is about three times 
broader than the exterior ring. 
These figures vary somewhat with different astronomers, 
but they may be taken as an average, more or less. 
It is difficult for us to form a just conception of the great 
magnitude and mechanism of Saturn’s ponderous, magnificent 
and wondrous rings. Imagine, if you can, the immense size of 
the space enclosed by the inner ring, which is large enough ‘o 
contain 340 globes as large as our earth, and the outer ring 
could enclose within its inner circumference 575 globes of the 
same size, supposing every portion of the space to be filled. 
The outer ring is large enough to contain a globe containing 
more than two thousand eight hundred billions of cubical miles, 
which would be equal to mofe than 10,800 globes of the size of 
the earth. 
The two rings contain, on one side, above 14,400 millions 
ot square miles, and as the other sides of the rings contain the 
same extent of surface, the whole superficial area of both rings 
will amount to more than 28,800 millions of square miles, more 
than 146 times the number of square miles on the surface of 
the earth. If these rings were inhabited, or intended to be in- 
habited, they could accommodate a population of 8 billions oi 
inhabitants, or more than 10,000 times the population of our 
earth, so that these rings, sized up with reference to their space 
