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30 COSMOS.by Aristotle^—IjIIows the idea of its iiDmcAsui ,ability Separateportions only have been rendered accessible to measurement,and the numerical results, which far exceed thegrasp of our comprehension, become a source of mere puerilegratification to those who delight in high numbers, and imaginethat the sublimity of astronomical studies may beheightened by astounding and terrific images of physical magnitude.The distance of CI Cygni from the Sun is 657,000semi-diameters of the Earth's orbit ;a distance which lighttakes rather more than ten years to traverse, v/hile it passesfrom the ^un to the Earth in 8' 17"-78. Sir John Herschelconjectures, from his ingenious combination of photometriccalculations,! that if the stars in the great circle of the MilkyWay which he saw in the field of his twenty-feet telescopewere newly-arisen luminous cosmical bodies, they would haverequired 2000 years to transmit to us the first ray of lightAll attempts to present such numerical relations fail, eitherfrom the immensity of the unit by which they must be measured,or from the high number yielded by the repetition ofthis unit. Bessel$ very truly observes that " the distancewhich light traverses in a yearis not more appreciable tous than the distance which it traverses in ten years. Thereforeevery endeavor must fail to convey to the mind anyidea of a magnitude exceeding those that are accessible onthe earth." This overpowering force of numbers is as clearlym^anifested in the smallest organisms of animal life as inthe milky way of those self-luminous suns which we calliixed stars, ^^liat masses of Polythalami;care inclosed, accordingto Ehrenberg, in one thin stratum of chalk This!eminent investigator of nature asserts that one cubic inch ofthe Bilin polishing slate, which constitutes a sort of mountain cap forty feet in height, contains 41,000 millions of tin*microscopic Galioiiella clistans ; while the same volume containsmore than 1 billion 750,000 millions of distinct individualsof Galionclla fcrniginca.k Such estimates remindas of the treatise named Arcnarius {^aitalT7]g)of Archimedes—of the sand-grains which might fill the universe ofspace If the I starry heavens, by incalculable numbers,laagnitude, space, duration, and length of periods, impresa* Avistot., De Coelo, 1, 7. p. 276, Bekker.t Sir John Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, IStf), § 803, p. 541.X Bessel, ill Schumacher's Jahrbuch fur 1839,s. .'30.§ p:hrenberg, Ahhandl. der Berl. Akad., 1838, s. 50; also in hie Infuttonsthicre,s. 170.