Page:God Manifest.djvu/34

24 would take six thousand fibres of the spider's web ta make up the thickness of a common thread of sewing silk? Is it true that a human blood-cell does not measure more than one four-thousandth part of an inch in thickness, and yet by such cells the whole structure of the body is built up and its daily waste repaired? These are but a few of the manifold wonders with which nature abounds, and which proclaim the wisdom; and goodness of the Creator." The minuteness of animalcules is indeed inconceivable. Leuwenhoek calculates that the size of some of them compared with a cheese-mite, is as the size of a bee to that of a horse: a hundred others will not exceed the thickness of a single hair. But examine some of the larger insects, and witness the exquisite delicacy and beauty of their structure. With a microscope of the power of 600, lately perfected by Hasert, a German,—the dust, which by contact with the wings of the butterfly adheres to the fingers, was shewn to be a number of feathers; on those little feathers were observed longitudinal and transverse lines; and between each pair of longitudinal and transverse lines there were five or six rows of scales, like those of a fish. A dust particle taken from the back of the body of a sphinx, measuring one fifteenth of an inch in length, and one two-hundredth in breadth, had 104 of those longitudinal lines; between each pair of lines six rows of scales were visible, making the number of scales 624; the number longitudinally downwards would be 2,328: consequently the whole number of scales on this little feather would amount to 1,400,000, or fourteen hundred millions to a square inch. What a picture is here presented of the infinity of the Creator,—His power and skill equally