These facts may amaze us: and we might add others alike astonishing in regard to the air we breathe which appears so light and harmless.  This air during the most violent storms moves not less than 100 miles per hour and as you all know is most destructive in its ravages.  And as to its weight it is a certain fact that every man of an ordinary size sustains a pressure of not less than 30,000 pounds, and the weight of the whole atmosphere amounts to five thousand 357 trillions 147 thousand millions of tons.

     Yet my hearers when we look beyond this earth and contemplate the sun moon and planets and stars these facts in regard to the globe appear small.  The magnitude of the earth diminishes to a point and its velocity in its course round the sun is comparatively slow.  Large as the earth may seem to you, what think you when you are told that the planet Herschel is 90 times larger that Saturn is 1000 times larger Jupiter 1500 (1479) times larger and the sun 1,380,000 times larger?  And yet these are facts that cannot be doubted admitting