Airy and Stone, by another method, made it 91,400,000; Stone alone, by a revision of the old observations, 91,730,000; and finally, Foucault and Fizeau, from physical experiments, determining the velocity of light, and therefore in their nature altogether differing from transit observations, 91,400,000.

Until the results of the transit of next year (1874) are ascertained, it must therefore be admitted that the distance of the earth from the sun is somewhat less than ninety-two million miles.
This distance once determined, the dimensions of the solar system may be ascertained with ease and precision.

It is enough to mention that the distance of Neptune from the sun, the most remote of the planets at present known, is about thirty times that of the earth.
By the aid of these numbers we may begin to gain a just appreciation of the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe--the doctrine that all things were made for man.

Seen from the sun, the earth dwindles away to a mere speck, a mere dust-mote glistening in his beams.

If the reader wishes a more precise valuation, let him hold a page of this book a couple of feet from his eye; then let him consider one of its dots or full stops; that dot is several hundred times larger in surface than is the earth as seen from the sun! Of what consequence, then, can such an almost imperceptible particle be?
One might think that it could be removed or even annihilated, and yet never be missed.