SUNBEAMS AND THEIR WORK. 31 
the flat side of the half-sun it would take 109 such 
earths to stretch across the face of the sun. One of 
these 109 round spots on the diagram represents the 
size which our earth would look if placed on the sun ; 
and they are so tiny compared to him that they look 
only like a string of minute beads stretched across his 
face. Only think, then, how many of these minute 
dots would be required to fill the whole of the inside of 
Fig. 4, if it were a globe ! 
One of the best ways to form an idea of the whole 
size of the sun is to imagine it to be hollow, like a 
hollow air ball, and then see how many earths it 
would take to fill it. You would hardly believe that 
it would take one million three hundred and thirty-one 
thousand globes the size of our world squeezed to- 
gether. Just think, if a huge giant could travel all 
over the universe and gather worlds, all as big as ours, 
and were to make first a heap of merely ten such 
worlds, how huge it would be ! Then he must have a 
hundred such heaps of ten to make a thousand worlds ; 
and then he must collect again a thousand times that 
thousand to make a million, and when he had stuffed 
them all into the sun-ball he would still have only 
filled three-quarters of it ! 
After hearing this you will not be astonished that 
such a monster should give out an enormous quantity 
of light and heat ; so enormous that it is almost im- 
possible to form any idea of it. Sir John Herschel 
has, indeed, tried to picture it for us. He found that 
a ball of lime with a flame of oxygen and hydrogen 
playing round it (such as we use in magic lanterns 
and call oxy-hydrogen light) becomes so violently 
