on hand to meet the demands of all his customers, weighs out a single grain of chalk or any other article which he intends to attenuate only to the fifteenth degree; now, how much sugar will it require to complete the process?
The computation is readily made as follows:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grs.
÷ 240 grains in a cubic inch.
= 4,166,667,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cub. in.
÷ 254,358,061,056,000 inches in a mile.
= 16,381,000,000,000 cubic miles.
÷ 263,900,000,000 cubic miles in the globe.
= 61 globes.
By this calculation, we see that the mass of sugar required to carry the process only to the fifteenth degree, would be sufficient to form sixty-one globes of the size of the earth.
The quantity of water or alcohol required to attenuate a single drop of any liquid to the thirtieth degree, would exceed the utmost bounds of the imagination.
If perchance a single drop of the juice of pulsatilla, or any other medicinal plant, has fallen into the Atlantic Ocean, and the winds and tides
