its general rotundity. Chimboraço, one of the Andes, rears its lofty head four miles high, yet this is but the two thousandth part of the earth's diameter.

Obs.-Mount Blanc is not three miles high; the Peake of Teneriffe but two miles and a half; and Mount Etna not two miles. Our Snowdon is not three quarters of a mile; and but a grain of sand compared to the whole earth.

239. The mines, therefore, may be compared to the sting of a bee in the body of an elephant; and the mountains to the inequalities in the rind of an orange; yet, vast as is the earth, the sun, which enlightens and warms it, is one million times greater; or, in other words, one million earths united in one mass, would only be the size of the sun.

240. The land consists of two continents; the old continent of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the lately-discovered continent of America.

There are also many thousand islands surrounded by the sea; many of them, as Great Britain, anciently united to the continent, and others, the tops of marine mountains peeping out of the sea, the bases of which are at the bottom of the ocean.

241. When a point of land juts out into the sea, it is called a Cape or Promontory; as the Cape of Good Hope.

When two masses of land are joined toge ther by a narrow slip, it is called an Isthmus; as the Isthmus of Suez, and the Isthmus of Panama.

A Peninsula is a tract of land almost sur

rounded by water: Spain and Portugal are a peninsula.

242. The waters are usually divided into four Oceans; the Great or Pacific Ocean, ten thou➡ sand miles across; the Atlantic Ocean, three thousand miles across; the Indian and Southern Ocean; and the Northern Ocean.

Seas are detached pieces of water; as the Mediterranean and the Baltic.

Gulfs and Bays are parts of the sca that indent into the land.

And Straits are narrow passes joining one sea or ocean to another.

243. The vast SUN, to which we are under such sensible obligations, for light, heat, life, and vegetation; and without whose genial influence all the Earth would become a dark, solid mass of ice, is 900,000 miles in diameter; and the earth is 95 millions of miles distant from it.

244. The Sun is the centre of a vast system of planets, or globes, like the earth; all of which move round his body at immense distances, in periods which include the various seasons to each, and are therefore a year to each.

Obs. They are all pressed to each other's centre; but the action of their fluid parts against their solid parts, gives them a tendency to go forward in a straight line; and those two forces so balance each other, that they neu tralize one another, and, in consequence, the planets are moved round the sun in an orbit which is nearly circular. See 274.

245 The Sun has been commonly considered a globe of pure fire. A number of macula, or

dark spots, may, however, by means of a telescope, be seen on different parts of his surface.

These consist of a nucleus, which is much darker than the rest, and surrounded by a mist or smoke; and they are so changeable as frequently to vary during the time of observation.

Some of the largest of them exceed the bulk of the whole earth, and they are often seen for three months together.

They are supposed to be cavities in the body of the sun; the nucleus being the bottom of the excavation; and the shady zone surrounding it, the shelving sides of the cavity.

Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round;
On Nature, write with every beam, His praise.
Soul of surrounding worlds!-

"Tis by thy secret, strong attractive, force,
(As with a chain indissolubly bound),

THOMSON,

Thy system rolls entire; from the far bourn Of utmost Herschel," wheeling wide his round Of eighty" years; to Mercury, whose disk Can scarce be caught by philosophic eye; Lost in the near effulgence of thy blaze. 246. As the Sun is one million times larger than the earth, it is evident that the balance of their mutual pressure would not be destroyed, if one million of earths moved round the Sun; but, at present, we know only of SEVEN such bodies, some nearer and some farther off than the earth, and some greater, and some larger, called Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel.

The Sun revolving on his axis turns,

And with creative fire intensely burns;
First Mercury completes his transient year,
Glowing, refulgent, with reflected glare;
Bright Venus occupies a wider way,
The early harbinger of night and day;
More distant still our globe terraqueous turns,
Nor chills intense, nor fiercely heated burns a
Around he rolls the lunar orb of light,
Trailing her silver glories through the night.
Beyond our globe, the sanguine Mars displays
A strong reflection of primeval rays
Next belted Jupiter far distant gleams,
Scarcely enlightened with the solar beams
With four unfix'd receptacles of light,

He towers majestic through the spacious height:
But farther yet, the tardy Saturn lags,
And seven attendant laminaries drags;
Investing with a double ring his pace,

He circles through immensity of space.-CHATTERTON, 247. Some of these several globes, so revolving to receive light and heat from the sun, serve as centres to other minor globes called moons. These satellites accompany the planet

in its tour round the Sun; serving to balance its motions, and to reflect by night the Sun's light on the planet for the use of the inhabitants,

248. The earth has one moon, 2,000 miles în diameter, and a quarter of a million of miles distant from the Earth.

Jupiter, another planet, has four moons.

Saturn seven moons; and he is also sur rounded by a large double ring, 30,000 miles distant from his body.

And Herschel has six moons.

249. But if the matter of all these planets and moons were put together, they are not equal to a ten thousandth part of the Sun; or rather, it would require ten thousand such masses to make up the bulk of the Sun.

250. Besides the seven planets, and their eighteen moons, there are four very small bodies called Asteroids, which imove round the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, called Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, all of them late discoveries.

251. There are also a multitude of bodies, some as large as the earth, called Comets, which exhibit very peculiar phenomena of the Sun, The Planets move round him in orbits nearly circular, but Comets almost touch the Sun in one part of their orbit, and then stretch out into space thousands of millions of miles.