i879-] 
47 
in the Organic World. 
say a power of one-twentieth inch is exceedingly useful ; to 
see them with such a power only would show merely 
details which the mind could scarcely combine into an 
accordant whole. 
In the study of heat they would encounter difficulties 
probably insuperable. In this branch of physical investiga- 
tion little can be done unless we have the power of raising 
and lowering the temperature of bodies at pleasure. This 
requires the command of fire. Actual man, even in a very 
rudimentary state of civilisation, can heat and ignite certain 
kinds of matter by friction, percussion, concentrating the 
sun’s rays, &c. But before these operations can produce 
aCtual fire they must be performed upon a considerable 
mass of matter, as otherwise the elevated temperature is 
conducted or radiated away as rapidly as produced, and the 
point of ignition is never reached. The physics of such 
homunculi would therefore differ most remarkably from our 
own. 
Nor could it be otherwise with their chemistry, if indeed 
such a science can be conceived as possible for them at all. 
It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena 
which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of 
combustion. But, as we have just seen, such beings would 
be unable to produce fire at will, and would have little 
opportunity for examining into its nature. They might 
occasionally witness forest-fires, volcanic eruptions, &c. 
But such grand and catastrophic phenomena, though serv- 
ing to reveal to our supposed tiny men the existence of 
combustion, would be ill-suited for quiet investigation into 
its conditions and products. 
Let us pass now from Lilliput to Brobdignag, and con- 
sider how nature would appear to rational beings of enor- 
mous magnitude. Their difficulties and misconstructions 
would be of an opposite nature from those committed by 
the pygmies above imagined. Capillary attraction and the 
cohesion of liquids, instead of being over-estimated, would 
be doubtless entirely ignored. The dew-drop and the curva- 
ture of collections of liquid, where bounded by some solid 
body, would be altogether invisible. The behaviour of 
minute bodies thrown upon a globule of water would escape 
notice. The homucunltis able to communicate but a very 
small momentum will find all objects much harder than 
they appear to us, whilst to the colossal beings we are now 
supposing granite rocks would be a very feeble impedi- 
ment. 
But the most remarkable difference between such enor- 
