hat surround it, filled, and as it were crowded with life, down from
the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked
eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally
invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every
plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world
to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly
refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for
thousands.

Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be
supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal
waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than
ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other.

Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought
further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good
reason for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one immense
world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred
dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate
worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But before I
explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake
of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the
system of the universe is.

CHAPTER XIV - SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.

THAT part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the
system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in
English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun, of
six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies,
called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that attends
her in her annual revolution round the Sun, in like manner as the
other satellites or moons, attend the planets or worlds to which they
severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope.

The Sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at
different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other.
Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the Sun, and
continues at the same time turning round itself, in nearly an upright
position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on the ground,
and leans a little sideways.

It is this leaning of the earth (23 1/2 degrees) that occasions summer
and winter, and the different length