A penny so
improved from our Saviour's birth, as to double itself every fourteen
years--or, what is nearly the same, put out at five per cent. compound
interest at our Saviour's birth--would by this time have increased
to more money than could be contained in 150 millions of globes, each
equal to the earth in magnitude, and all solid gold. A shilling, put
out at six per cent. compound interest would, in the same time, have
increased to a greater sum in gold than the whole solar system could
hold, supposing it a sphere equal in diameter to the diameter of
Saturn's orbit. And the earth is to such a sphere as half a square
foot, or a quarto page, to the whole surface of the earth."
WONDERS OF SCIENCE.
A grain of gold has been found by Muncke to admit of being divided
into _ninety-fire thousand millions of visible parts_; that is, by the
aid of a microscope magnifying one thousand times. A sovereign is
thus capable of division into ten millions of millions of visible
particles, being ten thousand times as many such particles as there
are men, women and children in all the world.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION.--Liebig, in his "Familiar Letters on Chemistry,"
has proved the unsoundness of spontaneous combustion. Yet Dr. Lindley
gives nineteen instances of something akin, or the rapid ignition of the
human body by contact with flame as a consequence of the saturation of
its tissues by alcohol.
VIBRATIONS OF THE AIR.--If a person stand beneath a railway
girder-bridge with an open umbrella over his head, when a train is
passing, the vibration of the air will be distinctly felt in the hand
which grasps the umbrella, because the outspread surface collects and
concentrates the waves into the focus of the handle.
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