43 
c c 
SEA SAND.” 
A Lecture before the Yorkshire Philosophical Society , Dec. 1902, 
By HUGH RICHARDSON, M.A. 
T HROUGHOUT all ages the star-spangled heavens 
and the lonely seashore have impressed the spirit of 
man with a sense of the infinite. In speaking of the 
descendants of Abraham, generation after generation has 
employed the same formula —“ So many as the stars of the 
sky in multitude and as the sand which is by the sea shore 
innumerable.” Attempts have been made to count the stars. 
In our English skies and without a telescope only some 3000 are 
visible to the naked eye. Over 300,000 have been catalogued 
as easily visible through a telescope, and vastly larger numbers 
are now being registered on photographic plates. A high 
magnifying power turned on the Milky Way suggests un¬ 
numbered millions. The questions whether the number of the 
stars is really infinite, whether the material universe has finite 
boundaries, or stretches on for ever a shoreless sea where the 
light waves never break on any margin—these questions may 
be asked, but their consideration would take us off our safe 
shores of time and space into the deep waters of philosophy. 
Let us turn to something simpler. How many grains of 
sand would fill a cubic inch ? Well, a not uncommon size for 
fine sand is inch in diameter. Suppose 100 such grains 
in a row, they would stretch for 1 inch ; or on a square inch 
100 times 100, or 10,000 might be laid; and piling up 100 
such layers we have 1,000,000 grains to the cubic inch— 
more grains of sand in a handful than stars numbered in the 
catalogue. 
In the fairy tale of Ashputtel, the wicked'stepmother threw 
the dish of peas into the ash heap, and then told her poor 
