This seems an astonishing result, and some considerations lead to the suspicion that it may be too large, but if halved or quartered it is still very surprising.

Few of us, however, know what a million really means: Mr.

Croll gives the following illustration: Take a narrow strip of paper, eighty-three feet four inches in length, and stretch it along the wall of a large hall; then mark off at one end the tenth of an inch.

This tenth of an inch will represent one hundred years, and the entire strip a million years.

But let it be borne in mind, in relation to the subject of this work, what a hundred years implies, represented as it is by a measure utterly insignificant in a hall of the above dimensions.