train would take nearly a month to travel round it. Yet even our
whole globe is nothing in size compared to the sun, for it only
measures 8000 miles across, while the sun measures more the
852,000.

Imagine for a moment that you could cut the sun and the earth
each in half as you would cut an apple; then if you were to lay
the flat side of the half-earth on the flat side of the half sun
it would take 106 such earths to stretch across the face of the
sun. One of these 106 round spots on the diagram represents the
size which our earth would look if placed on the sun; and they
are so tiny compared to him that they look only like a string of
minute beads stretched across his face. Only think, then, how
many of these minute dots would be required to fill the whole of
the inside of Fig. 4, if it were a globe.

One of the best ways to form an idea of the whole size of the sun
is to imagine it to be hollow, like an air-ball, and then see how
many earths it would take to fill it. You would hardly believe
that it would take one million, three hundred and thirty-one
thousand globes the size of our world squeezed together. Just
think, if a huge giant could travel all over the universe and
gather worlds, all as big as ours, and were to make first a heap
of merely ten such worlds, how huge it would be! Then he must
have a hundred such heaps of ten to make a thousand world; and
then he must collect again a thousand times that thousand to make
a million, and when he had stuffed them all into the sun-ball he
would still have only filled three-quarters of it!

After hearing this you will not be astonished that such a monster