NO NATURAL STANDARD OF MAGNITUDE. 127 
of the liairs of liis head is a larger cylinder than is the trunk 
of the giant California redwood to him. He borrows his inch 
from the breadth of his thumb, his palm and span from the 
width of his hand or the spread of his fingers, his foot from 
the length of the organ so named; his cubit is the distance 
from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, and his fathom 
is the space he can measure with his outstretched arms. To a 
being who instinctively finds the standard of all magnitudes 
in his own material frame, all objects exceeding his own di¬ 
mensions are absolutely great, all falling short of them abso¬ 
lutely small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the 
elephant as essentially large and therefore important crea¬ 
tures, the animalcule as an essentially small and therefore 
unimportant organism. But no geological formation owes its 
origin to the labors or the remains of the huge mammal, while 
the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the substance of 
strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in un¬ 
broken beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. If man 
is destined to inhabit the earth much longer, and to advance 
in natural knowledge with the rapidity which has marked his 
progress in physical science for the last two or three centuries, 
he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of creation, 
and will derive not only great instruction from studying the 
ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest walks, but great 
material advantage from stimulating her productive energies 
in provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever inacces¬ 
sible, utterly barren.* 
* The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition of 
semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action, are 
now ascertained to he due to vital processes of living minute organisms 
both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological, as well as to 
chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal product. See an 
interesting article by Auguste Langel on the recent researches of Pasteur, 
in the Revue des Deux Mondes , for September 15th, 1863. 
